“All of you?” I was astonished by this sudden use of the plural. “Who’re all of you?”
“Nobody in particular,” she said, retreating, “just other friends who’re as crazy as I am about the Far East and who heard about your story.”
“My story?” I blushed, suddenly anxious. “What story? I don’t understand.” But now she appeared to hesitate, smiling faintly to herself and turning with my parents to look at the two buses that drew up at the entrance to the canyon, depositing in the soft silence the many wedding guests Eyal had feared would not come.
Already someone was calling to Michaela to come and help with the new arrivals, and she apologized to us, again with that graceful, precise Indian gesture, and disappeared among the people spreading slowly over the lawn, bringing with them from the north the first signs of darkness. Later I learned that she too, like Hadas, was connected to the kibbutz without being a member of it. Even though her parents had left the kibbutz when she was little girl, she still came back sometimes to work as a hired laborer in seasonal jobs, or as a waitress and kitchen-worker at weddings and other functions. I was still disturbed by what she had said and tried at first to keep an eye on her movements, but my attention was soon claimed by forgotten friends from high school and medical school, and also by a couple of well-known professors from Hadassah Hospital, whom Eyal had succeeded in enticing to come to his wedding and on whom he was now dancing attention, to compensate for the rigors of the journey. Eyal seemed calmer, and the sly twinkle had returned to his eyes. He had agreed to holding the wedding on the kibbutz not only to save money but also because of his plans—unrealistic, in my opinion—to leave the hospital one day and come to live in the Arava, to practice a more “meaningful” kind of medicine and also to enjoy the peace and quiet of the place. And indeed, the wedding was unusually quiet. My parents, who were now sipping the wine Michaela had brought them with evident enjoyment, noticed this and remarked on it to me. There was none of the usual noisy music, only the soft strumming of the guitarist, who had already turned into a dark silhouette on the diving board. Nor were there any spoiled, greedy children running around and making a racket. Eyal’s mother had no family left and his father’s relations had cut off contact with her after her husband’s suicide, so most of the guests were members of the kibbutz or friends of the couple, young people, some of who were still single. The young doctors from Hadassah were on their best behavior under the scrutiny of their professors. The only child there, a boy from Jerusalem, sat quietly between his mother and father. He was Amnon’s thirteen-year-old retarded brother, and his parents, like mine, had been invited to the wedding because Eyal had spent a lot of time in their house after his father’s death as well, and he was not the man to forget those who had been good to him in the past. Both my parents and Amnon’s seemed pleased to have been invited to this desert wedding and delighted at their meeting. After telling each other a little about themselves and reminiscing about the forgotten exploits of our childhood, my father tried to find out where Amnon stood in regard to his doctoral thesis, and to my astonishment I saw my mother, who was always careful not to touch my father in public, reach out and squeeze his thigh in the dark, for with her sharp intuition she had already sensed that Amnon’s Ph.D. was stuck far deeper than either he or his parents admitted, and she didn’t want to be the cause of any embarrassment.
My father took the hint and immediately cut short his questions, just as Michaela came up with a large tray and offered us warm pies that smelled of meat. It appeared that the protocol was to serve the main meal before the marriage, so that hunger would not prevent the guests from concentrating on the ceremony itself, which was taken seriously here, and conducted in an original style by two Reform rabbis, one male and one female, who came especially from the settlement of Yahel, near Eilat. I was eager to go on talking to Michaela, to retire with her to some remote corner in order to find out exactly what she had meant by referring to “my story.” Her passionate longing for India, which she had confessed to us, and her intention to return there as soon as she could, also made me want to refresh my own fading memories with her living ones. And without even finishing my pie, which was surprisingly tasty, I stood up and put my hand on her shoulder before she was swallowed up by the crowd of young kibbutzniks, Hadas’s friends, who had just turned up, clean and fresh from the shower after their day’s work. “Excuse me, Michaela,” I said, deliberately addressing her by name, “could I talk to you sometime this evening?” She blushed, as if my weak hold on her shoulder implied some intimacy of which I myself was not yet aware. “Talk? Why not?” she said. “But when?” I pressed her. “When will you be free?” She looked straight at me with her large eyes. “I’m free already,” she replied seriously, unsmiling. “Just let me take the tray back.” And she went to the buffet to return the tray. And the great relief I felt at her response suddenly gave rise, as I stood there surrounded by Eyal’s guests, forgotten childhood friends, to an idea that at first seemed astonishing and reckless but was also thrilling and compelling. If I really had to get married in order to be considered less of a danger in the eyes of the woman I had fallen in love with, maybe a “Buddhist” girl like this one, gentle and flowing, who drifted free as a bird and full of spiritual longings from place to place, would be ideal for me.
She took off her little apron and hung it on the back of a chair, and said with a pleasant smile, “I’m all yours.”
“Then let’s find somewhere quieter,” I said, trying to hint that I wanted to talk to her about something special. She wasn’t surprised by my request, even though the lawn was far from noisy, with people standing and talking quietly, going up to the buffet from time to time to cut themselves additional slices of the delicious pies. At first she led me toward the kibbutz houses, but suddenly she stopped, as if she had thought of a better idea, and retraced her footsteps to the little canyon, where she turned without a word toward the dark side of the cliff, on a mountain path clearly visible between the chalky rocks, yellow in the light of the distant lamps. “Come,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “If you don’t mind climbing a little, we can sit quietly and look down on everybody at the same time, so that we can see when the ceremony begins.” She wasn’t beautiful in my eyes, but very charming and pleasant. Her slim body was too tall and bony for my taste, and her little face seemed too small for her huge eyes, which shone in the light of the rising moon like two blue lamps. I climbed up after her in silence, surprised by her sudden decision to take me up this rocky, winding mountain path which ascended sharply in the utterly deserted landscape where from time to time we heard the rustle of birds startled from their nests and the beating of wings. “Are Buddhists allowed to marry?” The idiotic question burst out accompanied by a light laugh. “They’re allowed everything,” she replied at once, not surprised by my question. “Buddhism isn’t another vicious religion looking for ways to oppress people and frighten them, but a means of alleviating inevitable suffering.” She spoke seriously, and the expression “inevitable suffering” came out of her mouth sincerely and convincingly, evoking a wave of affection and sympathy for her in my heart. “It’s a pity you couldn’t have stayed for a few more days at least in the temples of Bodhgaya,” she went on. “There you would have understood for yourself what I could never succeed in explaining to you.” And once more I heard in her words a rebuke at my failure to take proper advantage of my unexpected mission to India. “But how could I have stayed there?” I justified myself to her as if I were really to blame. “Mr. Lazar was in such a hurry to get back, and I couldn’t leave Einat, who was in bad shape.”
“Yes, she was in bad shape,” she agreed gently, “and if not for you she wouldn’t have made it back home.” The path now turned sharply back on itself, and suddenly we were standing as if suspended in the air above the glittering blue rectangle of the swimming pool surrounded by the wedding guests. We were actually quite close to them, but completely hidden and secluded, absorbed in the story Mi
chaela had called mine but which was actually Einat’s, and which I had no need to draw out of her, for it flowed from her with the same simplicity and directness with which she spoke about everything, making me feel pleasantly calm and relaxed after months of inner conflict and tension.
She had met Einat with two other Israelis in the street in Calcutta, when Einat, still stunned by the sights, was at the beginning of her trip. Michaela, in contrast, was already an old India hand, after traveling extensively in central India and spending three months in Calcutta, where she had joined volunteer French and Swiss doctors offering free medical services at improvised sidewalk clinics. She had helped these “sidewalk doctors,” as they called themselves, in return for two meals a day and a place to sleep. This was how she had met Einat, on the sidewalk, when Einat came to ask for a dressing for a wound on her leg. Michaela had immediately sensed that Einat was in need of her help, that she was very frightened and upset by her encounter with Calcutta, and perhaps even regretted coming to India. But she also realized that Einat’s panic was something that she shared with all those who sensed that beyond the poverty and ugliness there was a spiritual power that could suck them in, especially those whose sense of identity was tenuous, who felt unable to achieve their ambitions, and who were always quick to look for a way of escape. And indeed, Einat soon persuaded her two friends to escape from Calcutta and go to Nepal in order to immerse themselves in the glorious scenery of the Himalayas. But after two weeks, to Michaela’s astonishment, Einat returned to Calcutta alone and came to look for her. That was how their friendship began. At first Einat worked with Michaela in the service of the “sidewalk doctors,” but she soon abandoned the work and joined some other young people who were traveling to Bodhgaya to take the course on Vipassana meditation, not because she was really interested in Buddhism but because she was one of those people who are more interested in escaping than in seeking. “And you?” I asked Michaela sharply. “Me?” She reflected for a while, trying to answer honestly. “I think that I’m actually more of a seeker than an escapist, but I may be wrong.”
Now I caught sight of my parents. They were standing and talking to the professors from Jerusalem, glancing around from time to time, presumably looking for me. Amnon stood not far from them, gesticulating excitedly as he spoke to two girls we had known in high school, while his little brother lay on the lawn trying to dismantle a sprinkler. Eyal and Hadas were nowhere to be seen; they were probably getting ready for the ceremony. But Eyal’s mother was still sitting where we had found her when we arrived, frozen like a spectacular white statue, a plate of food lying untouched in front of her. Every now and then she raised her eyes to the little crevice where we were sitting, as if she had noticed something. Suddenly low singing rose from a corner of the lawn, where a small group of men and women from the kibbutz were standing holding sheets of music in their hands. “They’re beginning,” said Michaela. “Should we go down?”
“No, why?” I said unwillingly. “If you don’t mind, we can stay and watch the wedding from up here. I’m impatient to hear the rest of your story, especially the part where I come into it. Before you said that Einat was running away, but what from, exactly?”
“What from?” Michaela was surprised at the question. “First of all, from her parents, but maybe from other things too.”
“From her parents?” I repeated in mock surprise, full of curiosity and excitement, hoping to hear something I didn’t know about Lazar and his wife. “In what sense?”
“You should know in what sense,” she broke in quickly. “You spent two weeks in their pockets, didn’t you?”
“You could say so,” I replied calmly, determined to draw her into an attack on them so that I could defend both the woman I loved and her husband. “But they seemed a very nice couple to me, perhaps a little too attached to one another, in an exaggerated, even pathetic way—the wife, for instance, can hardly bear to be separated from her husband, to be on her own even for a little while. But that’s all.”
“That may be all for you,” said Michaela with inexplicable anger, “but it’s evidently too much for someone who has to live with them, like Einat, and be suffocated by that insane symbiosis of theirs. Sometimes I think that if they hadn’t taken you with them to India, they wouldn’t have succeeded in bringing her back alive. She would have died in their arms on the way back home.”
“Died in their arms?” I repeated this dramatic phrase in astonishment, wondering at the profound, if unclear, antagonism toward Lazar and his wife in her words. “You’re exaggerating, Michaela. It isn’t so easy to die, you know.”
The singing below increased in volume, and the simple but unfamiliar tunes became richer and more complex. Two couples dressed in light blue outfits approached the center of the lawn, carrying the chuppah. They inserted the poles into the sockets prepared for them and unfurled the large, richly embroidered canopy, which was big enough for a number of couples to stand beneath at once. After it had been erected, the little choir rose and approached it, singing loudly, as if to encourage the couple, who were embarking on a daring and courageous enterprise, with their optimistic song. And then, from either side of the lawn, the two rabbis appeared, wrapped in prayer shawls; they bowed slightly, with a certain irony, to each other, and they too entered the canopy, while a pretty young girl stepped onto the diving board, walked to the edge, and with a regal gesture invited Eyal and Hadas to come forward and get married.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be pretty ridiculous,” I said to Michaela. “Why?” she protested. “I’ve seen this ceremony before; it always strikes me as beautiful and genuine. If I ever got married, this is how I’d like to do it.” And she went very red, as if alarmed by the words that had slipped out of her mouth. But it was precisely this delicate and sudden blush, which was incompatible with the logical and even somewhat dry tone she had adopted up to now, that touched my heart, and I couldn’t resist reaching out and letting my hand rest gently on her curls. “Tell me,” I said, “the first time I saw you, at the Lazars’, just after you came back from India, your hair was completely shaved—for a minute I even thought you were a boy. So how did your hair grow so quickly?” I saw that she made no attempt to free her head but instead kept it very still, as if to wait and see what the intentions of the hand resting on it were. “I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders and laughed. “Apparently it doesn’t know how to do anything else. But look—see how they’re leading Eyal.” And he was really being led, dressed all in white, by two escorts, who were gripping him firmly on either side as he glided between them. One of them was Hadas’s father, and the other, to my surprise, was Professor Shalev, the head of pediatrics at Hadassah, whom Eyal had chosen to fill the place of his father. How clever and cunning of him, I thought to myself after the three of them disappeared under the canopy. Making his boss feel emotionally responsible for him certainly won’t do him any harm when his permanent position comes up for discussion. From the other side of the lawn, escorted by her mother and a woman who was a stranger to me, Hadas approached, walking with a gliding motion in her floor-length white bridal gown. Eyal’s mother apparently didn’t have the strength or the will to lead her daughter-in-law into the canopy, and was still sitting in the same place, pensive, set apart from everyone else, raising her eyes in our direction from time to time as if she really were watching us. And then all of a sudden the lights went out, and someone asked the wedding guests to stand up. Two strong beams of light were shone onto the canopy, brilliantly illuminating the rich colors and shapes of its embroidery. The water in the swimming pool, which had been swallowed up in the darkness, began to glimmer. A profound silence descended, in which it was possible to hear the beating wings of the night birds wheeling in the canyon above us.
“Now we won’t see anything from here,” whispered Michaela in disappointment, and leaned forward in an attempt to see what was happening under the radiant canopy spread out beneath us. Through the opening of her white blouse I cau
ght a glimpse of small, strong breasts projecting freely from her long, lean body. I thought of my parents standing down there with the rest of the guests, enjoying the ceremony but perhaps asking themselves when it would be their turn to lead me under the chuppah. At this moment I wanted to grant their wish and be swallowed up, like Eyal, under a bright canopy like this one, to stand opposite a young woman and listen to the kind of thing now being said by the pair of invisible young rabbis, whose warm words of encouragement rose into the silence of the night. “Actually, I think it’s nicer to watch from up here,” I whispered to Michaela, who had given up on seeing what was going on under the canopy and was sitting by herself, clasping her knees to her chest. “I wanted to see them both from close up” she said, without annoyance but with an acceptance that apparently stemmed not only from her Buddhism, but also from a basic attitude of cool, clear-sighted serenity, which, I suddenly felt, might not only accommodate the strange love in which I was trapped but also appease its pain. “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you up here,” I apologized, in the polite British way to which I was accustomed at home, “but we still haven’t reached the end of the story you promised to tell me. What, if anything, did Einat tell you about me?” A faint smile crossed Michaela’s lips, very different from the one that had captured my heart, not in the least automatic, not brimming over in all directions, but very skeptical, and at the same time kind. And while the marriage ceremony below us reached its climax, she told me that Einat had known nothing about her parents’ plan to descend on her in India and take her home. Someone who had arrived in Calcutta from Bodhgaya had told Michaela about a young Israeli woman lying in the Thai monastery there, very ill with hepatitis. Michaela recognized Einat from the description, and since she assumed that Einat had been infected by one of the people treated in the sidewalk clinic while she was working in Calcutta, she felt morally responsible and went down to Bodhgaya herself to look after her. When she found Einat lying there in her dark little room, yellow and despairing, suffering and scratching, she decided that her parents should be informed so they would come themselves or send someone to get her, but Einat refused to give her the address, as if she wanted to sink even deeper into her illness and wallow in it, perhaps because she was sure that in the end she would get over it by herself. But Michaela was afraid that if she left her there, her condition might deteriorate; she had already noticed her friend’s hidden desire to flirt with death in Calcutta, and therefore, in spite of her belief that everyone was responsible for his own fate, she decided to move up her own departure from India and insisted on getting a letter from Einat to her parents. As soon as she arrived home she hurried to the Lazars’ apartment in Tel Aviv to warn them about their daughter’s condition. But when Einat saw her parents walking into her little room two weeks later, she was not only astonished at the fact that they had made the long, difficult journey for her sake, but also dismayed, since she had no doubt that they would not agree to stay there quietly and look after her till she recovered but would insist instead on dragging her back to Israel with them. Apparently, when she saw a strange young doctor coming in behind them, who dispensed with asking all kinds of irritating questions and knelt down silently beside her to examine her, slowly and thoroughly, her spirits rose, because she immediately felt that she could trust herself to his hands.
Open Heart Page 29
