Open Heart (34 page)

When my father and I finally finished chatting about the
salaries
of doctors and possible complications in surgery, my mother held out a white envelope with my name written on it, which contained an invitation to Eyal’s wedding, which was to take place in three weeks’ time in Kibbutz Ein Zohar in the Arava. My parents had received a separate invitation, and Eyal himself had called to urge them to come. His mother had joined in the request, and even Hadas had taken the receiver and added a few friendly words. It seemed that it was important to them for my parents, who had known Eyal since he was a child, to be at the wedding. “You’re not thinking of traveling all the way to the Arava?” I asked in surprise, but it turned out that they had
already
promised Eyal they would go, and that they intended to drive down in their own car, for after the wedding they intended to continue on to one of the spa hotels on the banks of the Dead Sea and spend a few days there. Their disappointment at the cancellation of the visit to Tel Aviv had apparently only
intensified
their hunger for travel, for instead of waiting to consult me about their plans, as they usually did, they had arranged it all themselves, and even reserved rooms in a hotel. “What will you do at a wedding for young people on a kibbutz?” I asked with a faint smile. “Why on earth should you travel all the way there, and in the old car on top of everything?” But my mother was determined to go. Eyal had asked them to be present at his
wedding
, and they didn’t want to hurt his feelings. They remembered him hanging around in our house, and there had been times, especially after his father committed suicide, when they had
considered
him almost a second son. And besides, they had every intention of enjoying the wedding, the trip to the desert, the
kibbutz
. I would join them in Jerusalem, or they would come and pick me up in Tel Aviv, and we would drive down together to the Arava, and after the kibbutz we would all go to the hotel on the banks of the Dead Sea. They had already booked a room for me, and really, why shouldn’t I take a few days’ vacation? But I didn’t want to meet my old friends with my parents hovering at my elbow, and I immediately rejected their invitation to join them at the Dead Sea, even for one night. I did my best to
discourage
the whole idea, and told them that they would have to reach the Arava under their own steam, because I intended to ride down on my motorcycle in order to be free to return to Tel Aviv without having to depend on anyone else. “But you have no commitments to the hospital anymore,” my mother said,
offended
by my refusal to accompany them on their holiday. “I have other commitments,” I said, without explaining. They were very disappointed by my negative reaction to their plans,
especially
my mother, who was not enthusiastic about traveling alone on the desert roads and was afraid that my father would get lost, since he had a habit of misreading road maps and was too proud to stop and ask for directions. But when I saw that all the
obstacles
I put in their way would not deter them from keeping their promise to Eyal, I softened a little and promised to meet them at the exit from Beersheba and ride in front of them to the kibbutz, and also to guide them to their hotel later that night. At this my mother relaxed, and we passed a pleasant Shabbat together. I described the complicated brain surgery again at length, and told them about the new feelings I had experienced as an anesthetist. I also reminisced about India, and this time I was more generous
with my stories about Calcutta and the ghats of Varanasi, but I hardly mentioned the Lazars. I didn’t say anything about the guarantee either, and it was only on Saturday afternoon, before I set out for Tel Aviv, while my mother was taking a nap, that I got my father to sign it, quickly adding my mother’s signature
myself
.

I pocketed the signed guarantee with the feeling that I had
succeeded
in lassoing Dori from a distance with one more slender thread. But how absurd, I thought in despair, that after my
daring
confession, and after I had succeeded in going to bed with her, I should still feel as if I were standing at the starting point, needing some unimportant piece of paper as an excuse for
meeting
her. I knew that if I called her on the phone I would give her an opening to evade me, even if she wasn’t yet sure herself of what she really wanted. If it was true that this was the first time she had been unfaithful to her husband—and I knew just how deeply she was attached to him—she must surely be full of
remorse
and self-reproach at what she had done, even if she was a little bit in love with me or felt at least some longing for what had happened between us. Accordingly, I must on no account give her the chance to break off the connection between us before we met again, a meeting I decided to effect by the simple means of walking confidently into her office, like an old client who didn’t need an appointment to be granted an interview, however brief. And even though I suspected that she might be startled to see me, I was sure that she would soon realize that my only motive in surprising her in her office was to show her that she could trust me completely, just as I had taken off all my clothes and placed myself at her disposal, giving her the choice to do whatever she wanted with me. Yes, I would meet her on her own territory, where she was protected from any improper gesture or word that might escape me, but I was doing it not just to calm any fears of harassment but also in order to show her that my intentions were not only sexual but deeper than that, as if the guarantee I had come to give her was also a testimony to her tenant’s good character. Perhaps precisely because of the
significance
I attached to my sudden entry into her office, I put it off,
even though I had plenty of time on my hands now to haunt the little streets around her building, or to watch her strenuous
maneuvers
to get in or out of a forbidden parking place—I still delayed my entry, still hesitated to insert myself between one client and the next, to hand over the guarantee and relinquish the sweet thread of hope I held in my hand. Until one day when she appeared in a dream I had in the middle of the day, for now that my time was my own I had gotten into the habit of taking long, deep naps in the afternoon. In my dream she was standing and talking in her friendly, affectionate way to Hishin, who was
lying
, apparently as a joke, on one of the beds in the ward. And this simple dream for some reason agitated me so much that the same day, late in the afternoon, I bought a brightly colored
Indian
silk scarf which I found in a little knickknack shop in Basle Street, and I walked straight into her office and asked the
dark-haired
secretary, who remembered me from the morning when we ran around organizing things for the trip, and greeted me warmly, to let me in to see her for a minute as soon as she was free. But as it happened she was already free, and I went in and shut the door behind me and sat down opposite her, without waiting for her permission, and with lowered eyes I handed her the guarantee with my parents’ signatures on it and said, “Here’s the guarantee you asked for.”

Her eyes lit up in her usual smile, and she seemed quite calm, as if she had been expecting this sudden intrusion, and at that moment I didn’t know if she was calm because she was sure that what had happened between us was only a passing episode and it was all over now, or the opposite—she had become calm on seeing that I had not taken her words seriously and that I was bringing her the guarantee in person because I didn’t want to give her up. She took the guarantee and folded it as if she were about to tear it in half, but then hesitated and stopped herself, as if the lawyer in her were warning her of unpleasant eventualities in the future. But then she changed her mind again and tore it into shreds, which she dropped into the wastepaper basket,
saying
as she did so, “Never mind, I trust you.” Then she raised her laughing eyes to me and said, “So how are you? Have you
recovered
?” She blushed slightly, afraid perhaps of what I was about to say, and I said innocently, “From what?” and she said, “You know. From something that is quite impossible and will never
happen again.” I kept quiet, afraid that my rising lust would cloud the wits I needed for this confrontation, but I looked straight at her. She was wearing a gray suit like the ones hanging in her mother’s closet. Her bun was beginning to come loose, and locks of hair had fallen onto her neck. The shade of her hair was darker than I remembered from the week before, and I wondered whether she had dyed it again or whether the light in the room was deceiving me. Her makeup, too, had faded during the day, exposing the cute freckles on her cheekbones. Her breasts looked smaller now, outlined separately under her white blouse. And behind the desk I caught a glimpse of the pampered little paunch. She certainly wasn’t beautiful, I thought to myself, and a vague memory of my afternoon dream crossed my mind. But she had a warmth and liveliness and directness that I badly needed now, and if she insisted on thinking that it was over between us, she had every right to do so, for I had not yet succeeded in
convincing
her that only the one who had started it had the right to end it. And then, in a gloomy silence, I took the gift-wrapped scarf out of my pocket and put it in front of her on the desk,
whispering
hoarsely, “I got this for you. Maybe because it reminds me of India. I don’t know.” She was now stunned and overcome with agitation, as if neither my declaration of love nor my standing naked before her had persuaded her of the seriousness of my intentions as much as this little scarf. She closed her eyes tight, and then she pressed her fist to her mouth again, as if she wanted to hit herself for what she had done to me and to herself. She unwrapped the colored paper and spread the scarf out in silence, and then she smiled distractedly and said, “Tell me, Benjy, what do you really want? I’ll soon be fifty. I don’t understand. What was it there in India that threw you off balance? What
happened
? True, I made a mistake too. I was flattered by the thought of being desired by such a young man. But that’s all. What can it lead to? It’s impossible. And you know it.”

“Yes, I know,” I admitted somberly, and I went on with
miserable
stubbornness, “but I’m only asking for one more time.”

“No,” she said immediately and vehemently, without thinking, “there’s no point. Even though it was very sweet for me too. It makes no difference. What will one more time give us? It will only make you want more, and you’ll come back and pester me again. And why not—you’re a free agent, you’ve got no
obligations
to anyone. You misled me when you asked to rent my mother’s apartment, I believed you when you said that you wanted to get married.”

“But I really do want to get married,” I replied quickly.

The secretary knocked at the door, and without waiting she opened it and came in and announced the name of a client who had just arrived. “Right away,” said Dori, rising from her seat, and carried forward on her high heels, she made for the door, flooding me with a wave of love as she paused by my side. She wanted to say something to me, perhaps to console me, but the client, an elderly, elegantly dressed man who was apparently too agitated to wait, opened the door and stepped into the room without waiting to be asked. She immediately flashed him one of her automatic smiles, and for some reason she introduced me to him, as if to banish any possible suspicion. “This is Dr. Rubin, who’s like a family doctor to us. Please come in and sit down.” The client nodded his head at me distractedly and sat down. She accompanied me to the hallway and said, “I understand that things didn’t work out with Professor Levine.”

“No,” I said, trembling with excitement. “He’s a strange man; I don’t understand him. He claims that I could have infected you with Einat’s hepatitis when I performed the blood transfusion in Varanasi.” She burst into surprised laughter—was she really
unaware
of Levine’s accusations? “Perhaps you really did infect me,” she said with a slight smile, and turned around and went back into her room, and through the open door I saw her folding the scarf and putting it into one of the drawers of her desk.

At seven o’clock that evening Dr. Nakash phoned me to ask if I could come immediately to the hospital in Herzliah. In an hour’s time an operation was scheduled to begin. It had
originally
been planned without an assistant anesthetist, in order to reduce the costs to the patient, but the day before Nakash
himself
had caught a severe cold, and this morning his temperature had risen, and although he had treated himself aggressively
during
the day, he was still afraid of spreading germs in the
operating
room, and he wanted me to come and “fly the plane” myself, though he would be right next door to guide and direct me. “Don’t you think it’s too soon to leave me on my own?” I asked in excitement. “No,” answered Nakash confidently, “you’ll be fine. I didn’t choose you by accident. I’ve been watching you in
the operating room for a whole year now, and I’ve seen your grasp of internal processes. You understand what anesthesia means. Hishin hit the nail on the head when he praised you that time in the cafeteria. By the way, if you’re missing him, you’ll be able to see him soon, because he’s performing the operation
tonight
. But for God’s sake, Benjy, get on your horse and get over here as quickly as you can.” My spirits, which were low after the meeting with Dori, began to soar. I jumped onto my motorcycle, and with the resolution of someone on an emergency rescue
mission
I began to weave boldly through the heavy traffic leaving Tel Aviv. Nevertheless, I arrived at the operating room after the first premedication shot had already been given under Nakash’s
supervision
. In order to protect his surroundings from his germs he had made himself a strange mask which enveloped his entire head, leaving only two holes for his narrow black eyes. The
patient
was a woman of about fifty, plump and blue-eyed, whose figure reminded me of Dori’s. She had to have abdominal
surgery
, the correction of a hiatal hernia and a vagotomy—the kind of operation at which Hishin excelled, in spite of the mystery of the death of the young woman on whom he had operated on the eve of the trip to India. I put on a mask, and with the help of the nurses I began preparing the patient for the operation. Since Nakash was keeping at a distance from us, I myself began talking to the patient, asking her about her feelings and sensations, her husband and children, and in the meantime I exposed her chest in order to auscultate her heart and lungs again, to avoid any unpleasant surprises. From the corridor rose Hishin’s loud
laughter
, and Nakash signaled me to hurry up. I gave her the first shot of dormicum, smiled at her, placed the mask on her face, and connected her to the anesthesia machine, and felt her body
relaxing
under my hands; I gave her the first shot of pentothal, to relax her muscles, and inserted the infusion needle for the
anesthetic
; she lost consciousness, and I immediately felt her soul asking to be liberated and soar; I took hold of the cylinder with both hands and gave her an initial dose of oxygen; then I forced her clamped mouth open and inserted the small iron blade of the laryngoscope to prevent her mouth from closing, and in the
narrow
beam of light I succeeded in getting an exact view of the pinkish passage to the vocal cords, through which I slowly
inserted
the tube into her lungs. Then I turned on the respirator.
The nurse exposed the round white stomach, cleaned it with
alcohol
, and drew the line for the incision. Nakash, who was standing behind the door with his face masked, like a white mummy with burning eyes, made a V sign with his fingers and signaled me to clear his field of vision, so that from a distance he could watch the monitors of the anesthesia machine piloting the body which had been abandoned by its soul.