When the day of departure actually dawned, my heart was flooded with sorrow, as if I only now realized that I was going to be deprived of the affection and company that surrounded me without having made sure of even a fraction of the love for which I hoped. And the parting from Shivi was made even more painful by the fact that it took place at midnight, the strange hour chosen by the cheap travel agents to take the busload of young backpackers directly to the airport in Egypt for their flight. When I saw Shivi strapped into her carrier like one more pack next to Michaela’s and Stephanie’s big backpacks, I realized that my tolerant attitude toward the trip might not have been completely responsible. Although I had vaccinated the baby myself with the dosage prescribed by two reputable pediatricians in the hospital, I could not avoid the thought that I should have made them postpone their departure to make sure there were no complications. Shivi looked healthy and happy, though, as she gazed curiously at the faces of the young backpackers bending over her with admiring cries and showing their worried parents the baby with the third eye painted on her forehead as encouraging evidence of a traveler who was even younger than they were. I still felt guilty over Michaela’s irresponsibility and my own, and I swore to myself that the moment my situation became clearer, I would find a way to bring my daughter back to her natural place. But until that moment arrived, her “natural place” would presumably be on sidewalks and train platforms; after all, she was beginning her trip on two Tel Aviv paving stones, with damp sand creeping out between them, while her mother was busy embracing her friends, who were far more numerous than I had imagined and so loyal that not even the lateness of the hour had prevented them from coming to say good-bye. Even Amnon had deserted his night watchman’s post and hurried here in order not to miss the moment of farewell to Michaela. I overheard him promising to go and join her if he received a postcard inviting him, even though I knew that he would never abandon his parents and his retarded brother, who needed him so much.
Finally it was my turn to say good-bye, and after showering kisses on Shivi’s face and looking deep into her eyes so she would not forget me, I took Michaela aside to warn her once more to be careful. Although I had avoided touching her since the morning when the statuette had been broken, in order not to cause any embarrassment, I no longer shrank from contact with her, and to reinforce my words I took her into my arms, held her tightly, and placed a long kiss on her lips. Her great eyes remained open, shining in the darkness of the night, and her fingers lightly stroked my hair, which was something she never did, as if she knew that the danger hanging over my head was graver than any of the possible dangers threatening her on her trip. Before joining Stephanie and Shivi, who had already disappeared into the bus, she did not forget to say, “If you get into bad trouble, just leave everything and come to us. We’ll all be glad.” And while I joined my hands and held them to my face in thanks for this generous gesture of reconciliation, she let slip this final, surprising sentence: “Nothing’s worth dying for, Benjy.” Without giving me the chance to reply, she hurried into the bus, which was apparently waiting just for her and now lit its little red lights and silently, as if it had already joined one of the great rivers awaiting the young travelers, sailed out of the narrow alley, leaving behind it a crowd of friends and relations who suddenly realized that there was not much left of the night.
Accordingly, they did not hurry home but hung around exchanging telephone numbers and addresses in an attempt to tie a web of connecting threads to their loved ones, whose disappearance into the night turned even the joking words of parting they had just uttered into a suddenly painful memory. Only now did I notice Einat, who was standing next to Amnon’s pickup truck wearing a long black coat that emphasized the fairness of her hair, which she had brutally cropped as if in an act of self-mutilation. Had she just arrived, or had she been trying to avoid me? A shy smile crossed her face as she hesitated about whether to accept Amnon’s offer of a ride home on the condition that she climb into the back, for the seat next to Amnon was already taken by Hagit and her daughter, who had insisted on coming to say good-bye to her little charge. I quickly went up to Einat, for even if she guessed what had happened between her mother and me, this was no reason to avoid her. In fact, it was an opportunity to try to turn her into an ally. In spite of her embarrassment and resistance, I persuaded her to give up Amnon’s pickup for the pillion of my motorcycle, and with my own hands I put the helmet on her head and gently buckled the strap under her slender chin. Although I was used to the fear of first-time pillion riders, I had never come across anxiety as intense as that coming from Einat. Like a terrified animal, she clung to my leather jacket, occasionally breaking out into a scream, as if I were going to roll her into some terrible, hostile abyss instead of simply taking her home, driving barely above the speed limit through the still, silent streets of the city. As we neared her building, located in a pretty seedy quarter of the city, I asked about the terrible anxiety that had taken hold of her. But she was not embarrassed by her hysterics during the ride, nor did she laugh them off. She acted as if her panic had been natural and completely justified, if not because of the motorcycle then because of the driver. Now too, with the bike silent beside us and my hands removing the strap from beneath her chin, she seemed to be afraid of me, pale and shivering with cold, ready to give me her telephone number as I requested, as long as I would release her into the dark stairwell, where she disappeared with such celerity that she neglected to put on the light.
Did she really know about my love for her mother? And did this love, I asked myself, with not a little pain, seem to her so alarming, so outrageous and repulsive, that she couldn’t even stand for a moment next to the man who had gone to the ends of the earth to rescue her and whom she had trusted far more than her parents to save her life? Even if she thought that this love deprived her of her due, she could still have respected its mystery, which had begun in the hotel in Varanasi when I took blood from her mother to revive her. These reflections continued to trouble my thoughts on my way home and added distress to the sorrow of returning to the apartment, which in spite of Michaela’s efforts to leave it neat and tidy was still full of traces of the baby, the memory of whose sweet face brought tears to my eyes. And although my parents had told me not to hesitate to wake them up to tell them about the parting, I refused to burden my already sorrow-filled heart with the anger and disappointment of my mother, who knew that I had agreed so casually to their going so I could devote myself entirely to the insanity of the love I had so perversely chosen. I therefore not only refrained from calling Jerusalem but disconnected the phone, darkened the apartment, and got into bed hoping not only to sleep but to lose consciousness completely.
But my sleep, which did indeed begin with a full loss of consciousness, was soon violently interrupted by something like an electric shock passing through it. As if by someone’s hand on an invisible switch, it not only was interrupted but disintegrated completely, and from its ruins something seemed to fly up and disappear. And in spite of my soul, which was feverish with exhaustion, and my body, which was sinking heavily and limply into the bed, my conscious mind had taken control of me again and knew that there was no more hope of sleep. However tightly I closed my eyes, I found no consolation in the darkness, only a bus with little red lights, racing now, after crossing the border, on a desert road not far from the sea in the silvery moonlight, with Shivi sleeping on Michaela’s lap and Michaela probably sleeping now too, perhaps leaning on the shoulder of her friend Stephanie, who was chatting with one of the young backpackers. And for the first time I felt a pang of the anxiety of abandonment squeezing my soul, as if I were not looking at the lights of the bus which held my wife and daughter receding into the distance not from the breadth of this double bed but from the opening of a little pup tent, alone and abandoned in a desolate wilderness. Suddenly I was exposed to the incomprehensible indifference of the universe, and I had to switch on the reading light, although it did not restore my composure. In
stead, it only increased the pain of my envy for all those who are able to sleep, connected to each other by their bodies or their dreams. It was then that I thought, I have not been liberated but abandoned. And even the soft sound of the rain falling outside could not soften the new dread of loneliness stealing into the walls of the house. I felt as if the blood coursing through my veins were not enough to sustain me. When I shifted restlessly underneath the quilt and threatened myself with getting out of bed in the hope that my weariness would overcome me and return my lost sleep, the bed itself seemed to cast me out, as if my touch on the pillows and bedclothes were a burden to it. And a little like a sleepwalker I emerged from the circle of light in the bedroom into the darkness of the living room, trying to attach myself to a less alienating version of reality, the one contained in the shabby floral upholstery of the sofa, which immediately aroused my longing for the plump, laughing woman who sat on it with her legs crossed, frozen in alarm but also in delight at the young man’s declaration of love. But was such a longing, which might warm the heart with a sweet sorrow, enough to make me take off my pajamas and with limp heavy movements put on layer after layer of clothes? No. Something more real and powerful forced me to switch off the lights and go out into the rainy night with my helmet in my hand, in order to seek human contact. As if now that Lazar’s soul had left me, my abandonment had doubled.
If it had been even six o’clock in the morning I might have called my parents and avoided this weird nocturnal expedition. However, I could not have unburdened myself to my mother in my father’s presence or spoken of everything weighing on my heart—the parting from Michaela and Shivi, our plans for the future—though sharing these feelings would have eased my sudden sense of abandonment. But it was three o’clock in the morning, and since I never had had time to become acquainted with the Tel Aviv pub scene, let alone with the all-night discos, I could not seek human contact at this hour with anyone but those who were always prepared to give it—in other words, those at the hospital, where I knew that even at this still, secret hour, absolute and eternal vigilance held sway over even the remotest corner in the building, wrapping staff and patients alike in a blanket of security, whether they were tossing in their beds or asleep in their chairs or dead in their iron drawers. I knew that after getting over the surprise of my sudden arrival at the wrong time, one of the anesthetists in the emergency room might try to coax me into changing places with him, so I decided to go to one of the other parts of the hospital. It seemed much darker than usual. I asked one of the security guards about the darkness. He too was aware of the difference and concerned by it—if darkness reigned over the entire hospital, it meant that it wasn’t just a coincidence or an accident but the result of a new directive from administration to save electricity. And then it dawned on me, like a flash of lightning: they had found a successor to Lazar, and he must be someone from outside, if his first instruction was to dim the lights. I decided to go up to the pediatric ward, where there were always parents awake, sitting in vigil. But first I went down to my locker in the intensive care unit, to leave my helmet and leather jacket and put on the coat with my name embroidered on it and hang a stethoscope around my neck. Thus protected by the neutral identity of a doctor on night duty, I went up to the pediatric ward. As I had guessed it was humming with activity, not so much because of the concern of the parents, some of whom were sleeping in corners while others paced the corridors red-eyed with despair, but thanks to the wakefulness of those children whose as yet undiagnosed illnesses gave them the right to demand unremitting attention. I too wanted attention, but the parents who surrounded me did not see that I was no less exhausted than they were. Although I repeatedly explained that I was not a pediatrician but an anesthetist and I had only come up here to look for someone, they clung even to this passing medical authority and showered me with questions of a medical or bureaucratic nature, which I answered patiently but in a general, ambivalent, evasive, and noncommittal way, as if the source of authority which had always given strength and clarity to my responses and diagnoses were slipping away from me. It was not surprising that after a while even the most insistent of the parents turned away from me, and with my whole being crying out for the sleep that had been denied me, I walked down the corridor and peeped into the rooms full of bright posters and toys, to soften my burning eyes with the sight of the sleeping babies, some of whom were no older than Shivi, now lying in the warmth and safety of Michaela’s arms, or perhaps Stephanie’s lap. Even after I had gone downstairs, firmly resolved to go home, get into bed, and drown the inexplicable anxiety that had taken hold of me in sleep, I nevertheless made one last effort, going outside, still in my white coat and stethoscope, oblivious to the wind raging in the little stand of trees behind the main building, and into the annex that housed our small psychiatric department, which Lazar’s death had perhaps saved from extinction. Although I had never been there before, I knew very well that no concerned relatives would be wandering around its corridors. And even if they were, it was not them I was seeking but the doctor on duty, to ask his advice.
The doctor on duty was sound asleep. Still, I found someone to talk to in the person of an old acquaintance, none other than the ex-head nurse of Hishin’s surgical department, whose application to have her retirement postponed for a year had been rejected and who was doing night shifts as a substitute nurse in various departments of the hospital in order to supplement her modest pension. “But who rejected your application so quickly?” I exclaimed sympathetically, and I told her that I had seen her file on Lazar’s desk a few days before. “If Lazar was still alive, he would never have rejected a request from Professor Hishin to leave you with him for another year,” I added confidently, for like other people working in surgery, I had felt the greatest respect for her, even though I knew that she too preferred Dr. Vardi to me. But the white-haired nurse sitting in the cold, deserted nurses’ station, wrapped in a thick winter coat with a little electric heater at her feet, was not at all sure how Lazar would have treated her request if he had been alive. “Sometimes he could be rigid and almost cruel in his obstinacy,” she pronounced, and when she saw that I was astonished by her words she added, “Don’t imagine, Dr. Rubin, that just because you spent a couple of weeks with him and his wife in India, you knew all the sides of his personality.” There was a slightly aggressive note in her voice, and I expressed my surprise that even though two years had passed she still remembered my trip to India. “But how could I forget?” She laughed. “I still remember you coming in all confused with that big medical kit you got from Dr. Hessing and asking me to inoculate you. You looked so pressured and so angry and bitter about the whole business that Professor Hishin had forced you into.” I suddenly was overcome with affection for this noble elderly woman, uncomplainingly doing the job of a substitute nurse to take a few more shekels home every month. I also remembered how I had dropped my trousers in front of her that evening, behind an improvised screen, so that with a light and steady hand she could inoculate me with the two shots I had brought from the Health Bureau. “It’s strange that we’re meeting again today,” I said, unable to control the little confession that had been burning inside me ever since I had arrived at the hospital, “because my wife and baby left tonight on a trip to India. Only a few hours ago I took them to the bus to the airport in Egypt, and when I got home, tired out, and went to bed, I suddenly woke up after an hour or two. I couldn’t go back to sleep again. In fact, I can hardly stand to be on my own, something that has never happened to me before.”
She listened quietly to my complaint with a serious expression on her face. I knew that she didn’t have much imagination, but she had a lot of common sense and sympathy for any human distress, as long as she was convinced that it was genuine distress and not just a passing mood. She offered me a cup of coffee, but I refused. “No, I still want to try to sleep,” I explained. “I have to go back to bed. In less than eight hours I have to be on my feet in the operating room.” Like eve
ryone else on the hospital staff, she was surprised at the strange half-time post Lazar had created for me, and she asked me if I thought the arrangement would last now that he was dead. “Why not?” I asked with some annoyance. She shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps they’d find a way to eliminate irregularities committed in the name of friendship, things that weren’t strictly according to the letter of the law, she said—it all depended on the new director. “But is there a new director already?” I asked. “Has anybody seen him? Has Hishin said anything?” It appeared that she knew nothing, and neither did Hishin. But her guess was that somebody had already been appointed to the job, maybe even two or three people. Lazar had had a lot of power in the hospital, and perhaps the time had come to spread it around a little. That, at least, was what Professor Hishin thought should be done. “Yes,” I reflected quietly, “Hishin’s going to miss Lazar a lot.” She nodded her head. Her conclusions were graver than mine. Hishin was afraid of the new director’s revenge, and that was why he was demanding that his powers be divided. In spite of his eulogy at the graveside, he was well aware of the damage he had caused, not because of overconfidence in his medical decisions, as many people thought, but out of jealousy, for fear that some other doctor in the hospital would take charge of the case and get close to Lazar and usurp his favored position. That was why Hishin was still tortured by guilt, both toward the deceased and toward his wife, because everybody knew how close a couple the Lazars had been and how they had always done everything together, and anyone who loved one of them loved the other one too. For a second my blood froze. “In what sense, love?” I smiled, and my heart filled with despair at the possibility of the guilt and the love uniting into a powerful emotion that nothing would be able to withstand. “In what sense?” Hishin’s old nurse, taken aback, tried to think of an appropriate answer. “In the sense that he’ll stay close to her now and take care of her until he’s sure that she isn’t angry with him and she doesn’t hate him. Because the truth is that Hishin is peculiarly attracted to people who’re angry with him or who hate him,” she said. For many years she had been sharpening her perception of the head of her department, just as Miss Kolby had done with Lazar. “But how can he stay close to Lazar’s wife now that he’s got a woman of his own?” I objected. “Only one woman?” she retorted. “Hishin has a lot of women that he’s attached to. He’ll have no problem adding another one to the list.”
Open Heart Page 55
