Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  I was in an embarrassing predicament. Was I now going to be thrown out into the street because of a bizarre and abstract infatuation which had no point or purpose? Finally, I mustered my courage and called Dori to ask her where I stood and what I could hope for. The secretary put me through without asking me to identify myself. Dori picked up the receiver and held it in her hand while carrying on a lively conversation with someone for whom I suddenly felt a faint pang of jealousy. Her voice was loud and enthusiastic, full of confidence and authority. When I identified myself, I could tell she was confused. So, I said to myself, a spark or two has already escaped to her. “There’s been another misunderstanding,” I began jokingly, “and I’m going to be out in the street with my goods and chattels starting next week.” Then I sensed her relief. She no longer had to hesitate about letting me use the apartment as a means of ensnaring her. The situation in which I had landed myself, which I described in terms that were no more than accurate, forced her not only to accept me as a tenant but even to apologize for not getting in touch with me sooner. “The apartment’s not ready. There’re still a lot of things we don’t know what to do with.”

  “Never mind,” I reassured her, “you can leave them there. I don’t need a lot of room.” After some waffling on her part, we arranged to meet in the apartment on Tuesday afternoon, when her office was shut, so that she could see what had to be removed and what could be left there, and of course to finalize the terms of the lease. When I put the receiver down, I wondered whether she would bring Lazar with her or come alone.

  She was waiting alone for me in the apartment. Behind the door I heard soft classical music mingling with the pleasant sound of running water. I knocked, two light taps, because I didn’t want to press the bell, whose jarring noise I remembered from my first visit. She opened the door with a somber, serious expression on her face, wearing high heels and with a bright red apron cinched around her waist. Her hands were covered with soap. “You’ve complicated things for me,” she complained, her face flushing slightly. “Look at all the things I have to do here for you now.” Her direct, aggressive tone startled me; I was unprepared for it. Her eyes too, which had not yet flashed a single smile, looked hard behind the lenses of her glasses. “But what’s there to do?” I began stammering stupidly, trying to defend myself and perhaps also to dismiss her complaint as I stepped weakly into the apartment, in which I immediately felt a change even though I had only been there for a few hours the first time. The apartment was still neat and tidy, but the coziness and brightness that had prevailed on the evening I had examined her mother were gone. Perhaps it was the removal of the embroidered cloths from the little tables next to the sofa and the disappearance of the crystal and silver goblets which had stood behind the glass in the dark sideboard, or perhaps because the big family portraits had been removed from the walls. The curtains were open, and the view from the window consisted exclusively of rooftops, without a single scrap of sea between them. There was no visible sign of the apartment’s proximity to the beach, which had made me so happy on that evening. However, I quickly overcame my disappointment as I glanced around and saw how the rays of the setting sun were transmuted into a golden powder, which made the whole interior glow sweetly. On the white marble counter in the kitchen stood a row of delicate long-stemmed goblets crowned with soapsuds. The possibility that she was washing them for me, and not in order to store them, touched me profoundly. For a moment there was an embarrassing silence. My eyes avoided staring too obviously at her straight legs clad in honey-colored silk stockings. She still looked annoyed to me, perhaps somewhat humiliated by the dishwashing that had been forced upon her. “We thought we’d prepared everything,” she said, “but there’s still a lot left to organize here.”

  “How long has your mother been living here?” I inquired in a friendly tone. “Not long. Seven years. Since my father died. But she loved this apartment. And she invested a lot in it. It’s a shame; she could have stayed here for a few years longer. I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that she won’t be living here anymore. That’s why I wasn’t in a hurry to get in touch with you. I hoped that she would change her mind and come back. But now you’ve forced me to hand it over.” The surprising admission that she had actually surrendered to my demands flooded me with such a strong and unexpected wave of pleasure that I had to bow my head and close my eyes, which she interpreted as a sign that she had offended me. “If your mother changes her mind and wants to come back, I’ll move out immediately,” I said gallantly, in an attempt to make myself into an even more desirable tenant. But she shook her head firmly. “There won’t be any need for that. Don’t worry. So far she’s very happy there.” And then I couldn’t resist saying, “I know,” and proceeded to tell her about the telephone conversation. She listened in silence. A pleasant smile hovered on her lips, but her eyes were fixed in a hard, suspicious expression, as if intent on assessing the precise degree of danger posed by my determination to invade her life.

  Meanwhile the apartment was growing dark and the golden powder was losing its glow, fading into shadowy hieroglyphics on dull yellow parchment. She dropped onto the sofa at my side and crossed her legs. Her little double chin sagged. From a shabby cardboard file containing telephone, gas, and electricity bills, she took out a sheet of paper with a few words written on it, and said despairingly, “I have to make an inventory of the contents of the apartment for the contract between us. And I don’t have any idea where to begin. We’ve never rented an apartment to strangers before. Some people write down everything, including closets and sinks, but you’re not planning to remove the furniture and sell it, are you? Or dismantle the lavatory and the sink, right?” She spoke without humor, and I shook my head solemnly in reply. I was hypnotized by the rapidly darkening room. “So we’ll just list the really important things,” she suggested, “the carpet and the more valuable dishes, and one or two pictures. And we’ll write down the number on the electricity meter, and get the phone company to read the phone meter, and that will more or less cover everything. As for the clothing and stuff of my mother’s that she left here—are you sure you don’t mind? At least come and look at the space we’ve left for you and see if it’ll be enough.” She stood up, but to my surprise she didn’t switch on the light in the apartment, which was growing darker from minute to minute, not only because of the fading light outside but because of the darkness welling up inside the apartment itself. Between the kitchen and the bathroom, from an alcove where the brooms and mops were standing, a fresh, dense darkness was steadily flowing and gradually spreading into the two rooms. When I followed her into her mother’s bedroom I noticed that the glass goblets, from which the soapsuds had disappeared, were shining on the white marble with a ruby-colored radiance. The window above the sink was set in the wall at just the right angle to catch the rays of the setting sun. I wanted to draw her attention to this little discovery of mine, but she was already standing next to her mother’s double bed, which was covered with a red bedspread and piled with fat cushions with flowery covers, and opening the doors of two empty closets to show me the space already at my disposal. Then, with a gesture of resignation, she opened the two full closets too. In one of them I saw gray suits, all alike, hanging, and in the other I found myself standing, as in a familiar dream, in front of stacks of white shoe boxes, in which various objects had no doubt been stored. “There’s plenty of room,” I said in a whisper behind her broad back, in an attempt to reassure her. “Don’t worry, we’ll clear it all away. Just give us a little time to breathe,” she said in a hoarse voice, looking at me again with that suspicious, hostile look, which, far from discouraging me, turned me on so much that my penis began to swell. If only I could talk to her now about some shared memory from our trip to India, I thought quickly, I might be able to lighten the atmosphere a little. But the lust boiling inside me paralyzed me. Only now I realized that the darkness she insisted on preserving in the apartment was flattering to her. For I no longer s
aw the creases in her neck, nor the wrinkles around her eyes, and even her little paunch had disappeared, leaving only the impression of a mature, ripe woman. Maybe she wants to seduce me? I asked myself when I saw her turning back in the direction of the living room, where a new stream of light, pouring out of the tatters of a flimsy cloud, was now struggling against the darkness. “Now we have to talk about the rent.” She sighed and dropped heavily onto the sofa, crossing one long leg over the other while the silent battle between light and darkness raging in the room drew delicate pale golden arabesques on her stockings. The only thing I’m going to get out of falling in love with this woman, I thought anxiously to myself, is an exorbitant rent that comes from the lack of experience of a new landlady. “What figure did you have in mind?” she asked me unexpectedly. “Me?” I laughed. “I don’t have any figure in mind. But don’t worry, you’ve already warned me that the rent will be higher than what I’m paying now.”

  “Yes.” She smiled to herself in satisfaction. “I already warned you. Even though I’ve already forgotten what it was.” I told her the sum. She remembered and looked slightly disappointed, sunk in thought, her face appearing and disappearing in the darkness flowing from the bedroom and coming to join the darkness in the living room. “If we add ten percent to your present rent—would that be fair?” She asked me in her clear voice, which always contained a natural assertiveness. “I still feel guilty that you didn’t get anything for the trip to India.”

  “But I did,” I protested, bitterly but also with a feeling of inner satisfaction, since I had feared a far higher rent. “The trip itself, and meeting the two of you. And now this apartment. And you,” I added softly, “as my landlady.” She didn’t answer, only withdrew into the protection of the darkness that she had gone to so much trouble to surround us with, perhaps precisely because of an embarrassing moment like this. I didn’t know what to do with it either, except to let it sink into her soul like a little warning from me, like the warning she had given me about the rent, which she had raised by just ten percent. I didn’t dare add anything to clarify my feelings, I only knew that in the silence now filling the room, the tension stemming from the age difference between us was slowly, and for the first time, melting, and the fact that she was apparently only nine years younger than my mother and ten years younger than my father, and her daughter was only four years younger than me, had lost its power.

  This too could be the meaning of A Brief History of Time, I reflected as she finally stood up and went to the kitchen to switch on the light, illuminating the living room only indirectly. Without looking at me and without smiling, she announced that tomorrow or the next day, she would prepare a standard lease in her office, and she wrote down my ID number in a little notebook and asked me to get my parents to sign a guarantee, and we agreed that I would call her tomorrow or the next day to set a date for signing the contract and handing over the key. In the meantime, she promised, her maid would come to clean the apartment for me. “Do you by any chance remember where the valve is that connects the apartment to the water main?” I asked when I was already standing at the door, and a faint tremor of anxiety ran through me at the thought that I was leaving her alone. She tried to remember, going to look for it first under the kitchen sink and then in the bathroom, but she couldn’t find the valve, which as in all old apartments was apparently hidden in some unexpected place. “I’ll ask my mother; perhaps she knows. And if not, Lazar will find it,” she said, and she flashed me one of her automatic smiles, impossible to read, and thus we parted without any response on my part, apart from uttering the word “wonderful,” which was all I had to attach this woman to me until our next meeting—at which, I vowed to myself as I slowly rode my motorcycle through the bustling, wintry Tel Aviv evening, I would definitely confess my feelings.

  I knew that I should put the confession off until after the lease was signed; otherwise I might be left without an apartment. And even though my current landlady kept putting pressure on me to leave, I was in no hurry to contact my beloved. This time I wouldn’t make things easy for her, I told myself. If she wanted to nip everything that had begun between us in the bud, all she had to do was tell her secretary to summon me to the office in her absence, in order to sign the lease and take the key. If she didn’t want any further contact with me, if she saw my falling in love with her as something absurd and superfluous, all she had to do was keep away, or set Lazar on me, on the pretext that only he was capable of showing me the plumbing.

  But after a few days she called me, and with a new friendliness and none of the hostility she had shown at our previous meeting, she asked me how I was and whether I was enjoying my enforced leisure; she knew, of course, that Professor Levine had not yet recovered from his depression. “If only we had known that you would have to sit here twiddling your thumbs”—a merry laugh came from the other end of the line—“we would have left you to wander around India. Because of us, you didn’t even get to see the Taj Mahal.”

  “Right,” I responded immediately, overjoyed that the trip to India had cropped up at last, and turned into a common memory. “Because of your husband’s efficiency, the trip passed as quickly as a dream. And that’s a shame, because I know I’ll never go back there.”

  “Don’t say that,” she protested quickly. “How do you know? You’re still so young.” I didn’t answer this, as I had no intention of being dragged into a discussion of my youth at this point, after having convinced myself that the age difference between us had dissolved of its own accord in the darkness of her mother’s apartment. She now asked me, in a voice that contained an unfamiliar anxiety, if I was in a hurry to move into the apartment or if I could wait until Tuesday, when lawyers’ offices were closed in the afternoon, since she wanted to sign the lease in the apartment so that she could show me not only the whereabouts of the water shut-off valve, but also how to use the stove and the microwave oven, and so that we could go over the inventory that her mother had prepared, and then we could sign the contract at our leisure like civilized human beings. After all, who more than she understood that business deals between friends were always open to misunderstandings and mistaken interpretations. “Will your mother be there too?” A doubt crept into my heart. “If you want her to come too, to explain how to use the household appliances better than I can, I’ll try to bring her,” she answered naturally and composedly. “No, no.” I hurriedly dismissed the idea, aware of the eagerness in my voice. “Why drag her all the way there? It will only upset her to see the apartment at sixes and sevens.”

  Even though the suggestion to meet at the apartment for the signing came from her, I was sure that nothing was going to happen between us. She was a mature, realistic woman, basking in the love and admiration of her husband, and apparently of others too. Even if she enjoyed the attentions of a young man, it would never occur to her to think that he had actually fallen in love with her, for a woman who had been dining on a rich feast of love all her life would have forgotten what the obsessive hunger of being in love felt like. Moreover, despite the encouraging smiles she flashed at her reflection in the mirror, she was well aware of the folds of flesh around her waist. Nor did she fail to see the deep creases in her neck, and the blotches on her skin when her makeup faded. And even if she still felt complacent about her straight, slender legs, she wouldn’t be able to understand why a young and not bad-looking man like myself, a man at his peak, would suddenly fall in love with her. It would never occur to her that it was precisely her hidden weakness, which her husband had innocently revealed to me, had incited my interest and lust. Nevertheless, I prepared myself for the meeting with a feeling that it would be fateful for me. I decided to wear the checked shirt that I had been wearing when I performed the blood transfusion in Varanasi, even though it was nothing special and faded from many washings, for I hoped that it would give rise, even if only in her subconscious, to the memory of that mysterious hour when I had directed the flow of blood between the two women, and produce som
e sympathy for me after I delivered my confession, which I knew could only be humiliating and idiotic.

  I was determined to unburden myself, and I only hoped that, as before, the apartment would remain shrouded in that golden, dusky darkness which softens, in the natural melancholy of the dying day, everything that is ridiculous and grotesque from the human point of view. But toward afternoon the sky darkened and a hard rain began flooding the town. And I knew that the twilight would be enjoyed only by those flying westward above the clouds, while I would be obliged to stammer my confession in the full glare of the electric lights. Nevertheless, I remained resolute, even though when I knocked on the door I prayed for a moment that Lazar would be there to protect her, and perhaps to protect me too from my imminent humiliation. But there was silence behind the door. She had not yet arrived. After a few minutes I heard her footsteps on the stairs. Was I too beginning to identify her footsteps from a distance, like her husband? She was late, but alone, confident in her ability to deal with me by herself. Her face was covered with a heavy layer of makeup, but the clothes she was wearing were not in the least attractive. On the contrary, they made her look short and clumsy. She had long black boots on her legs, and her body was covered by the black velvet jumpsuit whose sleeves she hadn’t been able to roll up when I gave her the vaccination shots. She was brisk and businesslike, and no longer hostile, as on the previous occasion. “It’s a good thing you came early.” She smiled and opened the door. And I knew there was no longer any need to appease her for my precipitousness. Instead, it seemed that she was already very satisfied with the quiet and undemanding tenant who had forced himself on her. “Isn’t Lazar coming?” I asked. “No, he’s busy today,” she replied, and moved an empty suitcase standing in her way in the passage leading to the bedroom. “But he was here yesterday and insisted on emptying out another closet for you, to give you more room. Come and see how how hard he worked for you,” and with a flourish she flung the closet door open to show me how ingeniously Lazar had succeeded in making all the shoe boxes disappear. But he had not been allowed to touch the gray suits, which were still hanging in the other closet. “You shouldn’t have made such an effort,” I said amicably. “The space was quite enough for me.”