Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  But it was apparently precisely because she sensed what I was about to offer her now that she had answered my call and made a detour on her way home after a long day’s work. It wasn’t my supposed illness that had drawn her here but the fact of Michaela’s and Shivi’s departure, which had taken place with such speed and which she now realized wasn’t just an idle threat made in anger on the night when I had not come home. The fact that I had cooperated in this adventure of Michaela’s, and agreed to let her uproot the baby from her home and set off on a backpacking trip with no definite limits in time, in strange places filled with filth and sickness, just so that I could be as free as she was—this worried Dori and alarmed her with the obligations it sought to impose on her. When she could no longer contain herself, she blurted out a strange and surprising question—“But who are you?”—even before she asked me what I wanted. Perhaps this was the question I had long been waiting for, for without hesitating I began to tell her, the mere glint of her glasses now filling me with excitement, about the other river, the fifth river, which had flowed alongside me throughout our trip to India: the love and closeness between herself and Lazar. If at first I had been disturbed and put off by the intensity of the relationship between them, which was so different from anything I had known at home between my parents, in the end I was powerfully drawn to it. While I had been careful to wet only the tips of my fingers in the four real rivers flowing between New Delhi and Calcutta, in this fifth river I had bathed my whole body, and as if that weren’t enough, I had also drunk from its waters, which now, after the death of Lazar, were bursting from me until I was no longer sure who I really was. And although I knew that the disparity in age between us made us impossible for each other, I also knew that only I could guarantee that she would never be alone again.

  “But I want to be alone.” The surprising answer came in a whisper but with great vehemence, and a gleam of anger flashed in her eyes before it died and disappeared, together with the lights, which now went out not only in the room and the apartment but in all the windows of the buildings surrounding us. And from the entire neighborhood, in which the power had suddenly failed, a faint, muffled sigh rose, a mixture of sorrow and excitement, leading me to pronounce with a smile, which held a little pity too, “But you can’t.”

  “Because I never really wanted to before,” she replied with a curious confidence, as if the unexpected darkness that had descended on us enabled her to explain her entire life as if it were purely a matter of will. No wonder then that when I got up to look for a candle or a flashlight, she said, “What for? Leave it. The light will come on again soon anyway.” She took a slender cigarette out of her bag, and with its tip burning in the darkness around us, which seemed to be trying to produce light from every pale object in the room, even from the white smoke curling up from her cigarette, she spoke not only of the need to part from me but also of the obligation to do so, just because we had both lost the protection of our mates. Now that the man whose heart had failed to keep up with the intensity of his desire to dominate her was dead, she felt that the secret relationship that had come into being with me, which had been meant to give her some relief from the suffocation of his boundless and domineering love, was quickly turning into the same kind of demanding love, until she could almost believe, with me sitting in front of her in the dark, that Lazar’s soul had been reincarnated in me.

  When I heard this sentence coming explicitly from the mouth of the person who had been closest to him, I could no longer restrain myself and I rose from my place, transported by the heady knowledge that I was now free to realize all my hopes, not only with regard to her but also about the hospital and wherever else I wanted to go. As if not only the city, the country, and the world were opening up before the spirit which bore my darkest and most secret desires, but even the universe itself, where the most beautiful stars were now shining in the continuing darkness around us. But Dori too apparently felt the power of the terrible freedom seeking to engulf her, and she stood up, angry and frightened, and said with a hysterical sob in her voice, “No. Don’t come any closer. You mustn’t touch me. I won’t allow you. It’s impossible. Einat already knows about us. It’s horrible. You have to let me go. Say to yourself, She’s gone. She’s gone to join her husband in the land of the dead.”

  Twenty

  On the Friday evening of a dry, clear winter’s day, the journey on the top of a double-decker bus going from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem seemed not quite real to a motorcyclist used to riding low on the ground—like a gentle sail, rocking the hills and woods and rolling them up like a bolt of soft fabric. Now I was pleased that I had kept my promise not to make the trip on my bike, although I wanted to test its pull on the steep street leading to my parents’ house. This gentle journey, with its pleasant memories of riding on English double-decker buses, seemed to ease and soften the despair of my thoughts. I had lost the battle for my love. As quick and generous as she had been in her response to my first declaration of love, so sharp and stubborn was she now in her refusal to allow me even to approach her, as if she were fighting for her life. Even the darkness of the long power failure seemed to help her in her efforts to evade me. And when I insisted, in spite of her objections, in taking down a dusty candelabrum which had remained on the shelf from her mother’s days, and lit the stubs of the two thick red candles, I was alarmed to see in the light of the crimson flame that her face was hard and burning, as if the struggle to separate herself from me were using up all her strength. A feeling of pity for her stirred in me. And I kept quiet, to make it easier for her to leave me.

  When I reached the central bus station on the outskirts of Jerusalem, I saw that nobody was waiting at the stop for my parents’ neighborhood. It looked as if I had missed the last bus. Although I could have called and asked my father to come and get me, I preferred to take a bus to the center of town and walk from there, perhaps in order to postpone the difficult meeting awaiting me. Since the evening when I had blurted out my confession to my mother, I had not met her face to face, and our telephone conversations had become brief and businesslike. Even Michaela and Shivi’s parting from my parents had taken place without me. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt apprehensive about going home.

  I slowed down deliberately and tried out a number of new shortcuts in the little streets, which I had not frequented for many years as a pedestrian, wondering at the sight of the many worshipers in heavy coats disappearing into the doorways of private houses which on Friday evenings turned into song-filled little synagogues. Once more I realized how from year to year the Sabbath was tightening its grip on the city, not like Tel Aviv, where it descended like a filmy veil of silence, touching first the tops of the trees, like the ones I saw from Dori’s windows. Although she believed in her heart that if she persisted she would succeed at last in staying by herself, after death had released her from the yoke of love, I knew for certain that at this darkening moment, as dusk descended, she was not alone but surrounded by members of her family—her mother, the soldier, and maybe also Einat, with whom I would have to make my peace—and in the brightly lit apartment they were all helping her prepare dinner. Full of longing for the city I had left behind me, I entered my parents’ home, looking at the remains of the Sabbath candles smoldering in the two old silver candlesticks standing, as always, very far from each other on the dinner table, which in recent months had been surrounded by five chairs, including Shivi’s high chair. But this evening the table had returned to its state during the days of my bachelorhood—three chairs opposite three drearily familiar pale blue plates. I knew I was tense and worried in anticipation of the meeting, and that my parents too were afraid of the anger in their hearts. Since they didn’t know if I would keep my promise to come by bus, my lateness had added a new worry to the anxiety that had been hovering in the air here since Michaela’s and Shivi’s departure. Although a first announcement of their safe landing in India had been recorded on the answering machine, it was too brief to s
atisfy my father, who was far more concerned about Shivi than my mother. Because he was shy and reserved and careful not to burden others with his feelings, the anxiety secretly gnawing at him had built up into a new and unfamiliar aggression toward me for so lightheartedly allowing his beloved little granddaughter to set out on this irresponsible adventure. And although my mother—who was not an emotional woman, and whose attitude to Michaela and Shivi was always more matter-of-fact and balanced—might have been able to calm his fears a little by speaking to him logically, she did not do it. The gloom and depression that had descended on her with my astonishing confession, whose contents she had decided to keep from my father at all costs, seemed to prevent her from coming to my support in the simple argument that I now repeated to my father—that Michaela was entitled to take her child wherever she wanted to, including India. But this argument did not relieve the gloom around the dinner table. Nor was it dispelled by my parents’ restraint and good manners, nor by the obligatory humor which was part of every Englishman’s birthright. I was especially disturbed by a new phenomenon: my mother persistently and deliberately avoided looking me in the eye. Even when she spoke to me, she averted her face. She did not yet know that my love had been rejected and now caused me nothing but suffering. Seeking my father’s eyes, which met mine unhesitatingly but in total silence, I thought bitterly of the injustice of it all. When I challenged him for not answering my questions, he admitted with a embarrassed smile that he couldn’t stop thinking of what was happening to Shivi in India, what she was eating, where she was sleeping. “Stop worrying,” I said to him, “nothing will happen to her. Michaela has a special talent for finding her way around in the most questionable places.” My father listened and nodded his head, but he did not seem reassured.

  At the end of the meal he asked my mother to help him find his prayer shawl, for it appeared that the old janitor in his office had invited all the staff to his grandson’s bar mitzvah, which was to take place the next day in a synagogue in one of the new suburbs that had grown up at some distance from the city. “But do you really intend to go?” my mother said in surprise. “Why risk getting lost? I’m sure nobody really expects you to go.” But my father insisted. He was sure the invitation was genuine. It was important to this good, simple man for my father to honor his grandson’s bar mitzvah with his presence. Uncharacteristically, my mother went on trying to talk him out of going. And then a strange idea occurred to me. She was afraid to remain alone with me in the house, exposed against her will to the story of my love affair, which apparently still filled her with indignation and shocked her to the depths of her being. This being the case, despite my exhaustion after all my sleepless nights, I decided to spare them my painful presence, and soon after dinner I took my father’s car and went to visit Eyal, whom I hadn’t seen for ages. He and his wife had gone to live with his mother, whose condition had deteriorated. Even though I knew that living with her must be difficult for Hadas, I thought that the saving of rent had probably consoled her. Hadas opened the door and kissed me warmly and immediately asked for news from my “Indian women.” Eyal had apparently been delayed at the hospital, and Hadas would soon take the car to pick him up. In the meantime we chatted. She had put on weight and looked placid and serene, as if married life suited her. We spoke about Michaela’s trip to India. “It was only to be expected,” said Hadas. “Ever since she came back, she never stopped announcing her intention to return. When we wondered at the speed with which she agreed to marry you, she said, Benjy’s a doctor, he’ll always find something to do in India.” She didn’t even mention Shivi, as if she were simply a part of Michaela’s body. And when I began to complain about how much I missed the child and how sad it made me to look at her empty crib, it was suddenly time for her to drive to the hospital to pick up Eyal. Before she left, she woke Eyal’s mother, who knew that I was coming and had asked Hadas to receive me. She didn’t get out of bed but invited me into her bedroom, in which nothing had changed since my childhood except for a wheelchair, which was standing next to her bed and which filled me with surprise and concern. She reassured me, a faint blush spreading over her bloated face. She didn’t need the wheelchair, she only used it out of laziness, because her legs found it hard to bear the weight of her body. Indeed, since the last time I had seen her, she had put on even more weight. She was very glad to see me and began telling me all kinds of stories about her son and daughter-in-law, but my heart, which was shriveled up in its own pain and sorrow, was not interested in hearing stories about other people, even if they were good friends. My weariness and the excitement of the past week were also beginning to take their toll. Since I was now deep in the old brown velvet armchair opposite her bed, breathing in the familiar smell of the big bedroom, my eyes began to close of their own accord as she spoke. She smiled to herself. In the light, fitful slumber that descended on me, I saw her getting up, vast beyond belief, wrapping herself in her robe, sitting down in her wheelchair, and riding over to me to place a blanket on my knees, and then gliding out of the room, whose warmth and coziness combined with my depression to make me want to disappear or be absorbed into my surroundings.

  When Eyal and Hadas arrived after a considerable delay, the three of us were unable to enjoy the reunion as we had hoped. Even though Eyal was very tired from a hard day at the hospital, he didn’t want to talk about anything not connected to medicine and his work. He was particularly interested in finding out what had happened in Lazar’s open heart surgery, and if anything in my position could change for the worse now that the director who had taken me under his wing had gone. But still a little dazed and slow from my unexpected nap, I answered in general terms, which did not satisfy Eyal, eager for gossip about dramatic confrontations between doctors to rouse his overworked soul from its lethargy. Only his mother was now wide awake, and she even got out of her wheelchair to give us a little midnight snack, including warm cookies fresh from the oven, which I polished off despite how late it was. When I reached home after midnight, I did not make for the kitchen as usual to look for something before I went to bed, but sat for a while in the dark living room, brooding about the fact that although I knew my mother was lying awake in bed, she did not dare to come out to me as usual, as if she were afraid of facing me. I myself would not have objected to holding the impossible but essential clarification between us right now, in the middle of the night. My father’s prayer shawl, which was lying on the table, ironed and neatly folded, testified to the fact that his determination had overcome her fears of being alone with me, and tomorrow, whether we wanted to or not, his absence would force us to confront one another. This being the case, I averted my face when I walked past their open bedroom door, so I wouldn’t see her lying there awake, and went straight to bed. And in complete contrast to the torments of insomnia that I had suffered in recent nights, even before I could curl up in the fetal position to look for help in the memory of that primal sleep, the flicker of consciousness went out, as if the presence of my parents in the next room, even though they were hostile to me at the moment, acted on my nerves like a shot of dormicum.

  Perhaps because sleep came to me so immediately, I felt no pleasure on waking but only a sudden oppression, exacerbated by the sound of my mother’s soft but unquiet steps pacing around the house. It was very late, and the fact that my mother had failed to wake me before my father left was a sign not of her consideration for my tiredness but of her fear of listening to my story. To make things easier for her, I didn’t go straight to the kitchen to have breakfast. Instead I went to the bathroom to take a shower and shave and then back to my bedroom to get dressed, and only then, washed and dressed, as in the movies, where the perfectly groomed appearance of the hero at the breakfast table is a declaration of his decency and stability, I looked into the living room, which was bathed in the quiet light of a winter Sabbath in Jerusalem. She was sitting in the corner of the sofa, upholstered with green floral fabric that they had bought on their last visit to England. She w
as holding her book at a great distance from her upright head, which was as sharp as the head of a sad, tired bird. Vocal music full of emotion was pouring out of the radio, interrupted by the conceited voice of the director of the Saturday morning musical quiz. She sensed my presence immediately, and she looked straight at me, although from a distance, and said, “Everything’s ready on the table, Benjy. Eat first and then we’ll talk.” This strange and definite separation between breakfast and the conversation about to take place was a clearer indication than anything else of her fear that talking about my love would dirty us. I stopped in my tracks, and despite the dryness in my throat and my craving for coffee, I walked into the living room and said, “Never mind. I’ll eat later. Father might be back at any moment. Let’s talk now.” I switched off the radio, and for no apparent reason, without asking her permission, I shut the book which she had placed open on the table—an English translation of a Hebrew novel she had mentioned admiringly at dinner last night. Then I lowered myself slowly into an armchair and asked, “Are you angry with me?” Before she had a chance to answer I added, “If you’re angry or worried, there’s no more reason for you to be. The relationship I told you about has already been broken off. And anyway, what did you think? That there was any chance for a love like that?” It was possible to sense the deep shock that passed through her at the sound of the word “love” coming from my mouth. “What are you talking about?” she asked, as if she could hardly breathe. “About my love for that woman,” I replied firmly and quickly, trying to fix her eyes on mine and not let her evade me anymore. “But how can it be possible?” She dropped her eyes with a forgiving smile, as if struggling with the strange obstinacy of a child. “It’s possible,” I stated in a voice that was quiet but full of anger. “I’m telling you so. Listen to me. I’m very unhappy, because I fell in love with that woman with all my heart and soul.” My mother clenched her hand and raised it to her mouth in a gesture of obvious distress. A long silence ensued. “But when did it begin? This love of yours?” she asked in the end, and a very thin, twisted smile passed over her lips, as if only by twisting them could she force her lips to pronounce the word in whose reality she had up to now refused to believe in—perhaps for herself as well. “When?” I was at a loss, because it suddenly seemed to me that we were talking about something very ancient. “Apparently on our trip to India. But not at the beginning, only toward the end. At first she got on my nerves. But at the end my feelings underwent a transformation. Maybe they took a young doctor with them so that he would fall in love with Einat, but I fell in love with her instead.” My mother listened to me with concentrated attention, nodding her head slightly. “But what do you want now?” she asked gently, the shy little girl’s fist still by her mouth. “What you always want when you love somebody. Everything,” I answered calmly, suddenly feeling that only the whole truth, that truth which had always been a supreme value in this house, would protect me from her disgust, even if I revealed everything that had happened over the past two years to her. “Yes, everything,” I repeated firmly, “because I already had everything. Because I’ve already been with her. Even before Lazar’s death. Even before my marriage to Michaela, but afterward too. A few times. In England, for example, when you were away, in the house where you stayed—but not in your room, in another room further inside the house.” My mother’s face now turned very red, as if the indication of the exact spot made the act so powerfully real that it made her giddy. She averted her face, in profound agitation but not in anger. Did she think that what had happened a few feet from the room where she had stayed with my father had caused Lazar’s death and compelled Michaela to take Shivi and escape to India?