Open Heart (35 page)

Hishin was still delaying his entry, like a conductor waiting for the members of the orchestra to tune their instruments. But when the nurse came in with the X-rays and placed them like a musical score on the illuminated screen, I sensed his close presence and trembled with excitement, for I knew that Nakash had kept my participation in the operation a secret from him. He came in slowly, tall, smiling, pleased with himself, humming under his breath. The mauve color of his gown and mask, which in this hospital took the place of the standard green, gave him a gay, lighthearted air, as if he had dressed up as somebody else. He stopped and stared in playful surprise at the masked Nakash standing in the corner, and then his eyes met mine, which were fixed on the monitors of the anesthesia machine. “What a
pleasant
surprise,” he said when he had recovered. “My friend Dr. Rubin! So you’ve abandoned the knife but not the operating room. Very good. A very positive direction. When you left us, I myself thought of advising you to specialize in anesthesiology, but I was afraid you would think I was antagonistic to your great ambitions. But I see that Dr. Nakash has succeeded in persuading you. Congratulations, Nakash, you’ve found the ideal assistant.”

And then at last, the hard, green, open eye—whether it is male or female is still impossible to tell—begins to flicker and dim, until its anxiety is subdued by sleep. And despite the sorrow and the disappointment, for freedom has eluded them again, the caress of a strange but familiar feather brings comfort in the darkness. And when slender spears of light appear between the bald yellow crags and a purple brush paints the sky, the two are already huddled close together, tangled in the branches of a dry, sturdy bush, waiting for the sun to hammer the sky into a bright, unblinking blue. They have penetrated the heart of the Arava in order to learn the lesson that neither of them is capable of
remaining
alone.

But since they have broken the chain of marriage which joined them, from now on they are doomed to scratch the desert soil for food and to drink the bitter, salty water of the sea of death. Awed by the fatefulness of their meeting, they reverently circle the torn, bleeding remains of the mystery, which never left them and pursued them relentlessly in order to join them together again. Now the ruined, pitiful remains lie before them on the stones, mangled and exhausted but still twitching, as if they want to fly again or to change their form. A severed arm turns into a black wing, a lost leg into a tail, and cracked eyeglasses into a sharp beak, until the furnace of noon welds all the pieces into one, and a glossy black crow rises from the dry ground and flaps its dark wings.

For some reason, Eyal’s approaching wedding gave rise in me to excitement mingled with a faint anxiety, as if something
significant
were about to take place. Eyal himself tirelessly drummed up interest in the event by constant consultations about how to increase the numbers of his guests. Since he feared that people would be deterred by the distance and the wedding would be poorly attended, he decided to send out as many invitations as possible, and he kept phoning me to remind him of the names and addresses of forgotten friends from our school days. But even the long list of wedding guests failed to reassure him, and he was constantly on the phone, calling people up to make sure that they weren’t planning a last-minute defection. And perhaps it was only the familiar anxiety of my friend Eyal, who ever since he had lost his father was afraid of being abandoned and
rejected
, that aroused my excitement and expectation, which were apparently conveyed to my parents too, for not only did they buy a handsome and expensive present for the young couple from all of us, but my mother bought herself a new dress as well, and my father took the car to the garage for a general overhaul. The old car and the long drive were now our main concern, and in order to make the long day’s drive easier on my father and to avoid unnecessary complications with the meeting in Beersheba, my parents arrived in the morning in Tel Aviv, and after visiting an elderly aunt in an old folks’ home, they had lunch with me in a little restaurant and came home with me for a short rest in my new apartment, which to my surprise my mother decided she liked better than the old one in spite of its many disadvantages. “Even though you made a mistake,” she said in her pedagogical way, “it was in the right direction.” I made my bed for them with clean sheets and blankets, and placed a little electric heater in the room. I insisted that they take off their clothes and put on
pajamas
and take a proper nap, to refresh themselves before the great adventure. At first they were amused by my insistence, which was uncharacteristic of me, but in the end they gave in. And although my mother emerged from the room after fifteen minutes, my
father
fell into a deep sleep, which lasted so long that it began to worry us both. It was only when I saw him emerging from my bedroom dazed and confused, more exhausted after his sleep than before it, that I suddenly felt a pang of compassion for them both, and I wondered whether I shouldn’t give up the idea of riding down separately on my motorcycle and join them in the car, to help my father with the driving. The problem was the
drive from the kibbutz to the hotel on the Dead Sea; I knew that if I left my motorcycle behind, I’d have to drive them there after the wedding, spend the night in the hotel, and take the bus back to Tel Aviv in the morning, a tedious and time-consuming project that I was not prepared to undertake. Especially since I had promised Amnon—who was riding down with his parents, who had also been invited, in a special bus from Jerusalem—to give him a lift back to Tel Aviv on my motorcycle, and during the course of the ride we would finally be able to hold the promised and long-delayed astrophysical debate.

The wedding ceremony was due to begin at half past seven, but Eyal had made us swear to arrive while it was still light so that we could enjoy the long and stunningly beautiful evening. “Don’t miss the desert sunset,” he repeatedly warned us.
However
, it was not only for the sake of the sunset that our little convoy set out at three o’clock in the afternoon, but in order to soften the harshness of the 150-mile drive ahead of us. My father was on the whole a good driver, but recently he had begun to experience moments of dreaminess while at the wheel, which would have ended in catastrophe if not for my mother’s
vigilance
. And there was also the question of navigation. Although the road to the kibbutz was straight and uncomplicated, I knew that it was sometimes just these highways, racing automatically ahead, that misled my father, who would wait tensely for the turnoff until he couldn’t stand it any longer, and at some
blameless
and insignificant junction he would suddenly decide that the time had come and turn the wheel. But this time it had been clearly agreed between us that he would turn off the road only when he received a clear sign from me. I began to drive slowly in front of them, as if they were important guests in a foreign land, leading them through the labyrinth of the Tel Aviv streets and onto the right lane of the expressway, where I allowed myself to put a little distance between us, and even to lose them for a while, only to catch them again in the stream of traffic before the interchange leading to the south, whose broad plains were
radiant
now in the warm light that flooded the inside of my helmet. Even though it was still officially winter, and the young weather forecasters who had become popular media stars during the months of storms and snow were still nostalgically predicting rain and stormy weather, the warmth of spring had already
arrived
to comfort fields devastated by floods, lawns shriveled by frost, and trees exhausted by strong winds; even the broad asphalt road seemed to be exuding a delightful springlike
fragrance
. I couldn’t resist stopping at the side of the road, and like a grim traffic cop I waved my parents down, to tell them to open their windows and breathe in the fresh new air.

I still nursed a certain resentment and anger in the wake of the disappointing confrontation in Dori’s office, but I had not yet given up hope. Still, the determination and decisiveness of her efforts to shake me off had taken me aback. In the beginning I had not hoped for anything, but when she unexpectedly
responded
to my fervent declaration of love, I realized that I had not suddenly turned into a deluded madman but remained what I always was, a rational, realistic person aspiring to what was within the bounds of possibility. Indeed, reality had proved that even a woman like her, ostensibly so inaccessible, could see me as a possible partner, even though I still didn’t know how or why, whether it was only because of the charm of my youth as such, or also thanks to certain inner qualities of my own, which had been revealed to her in the light of India. If she had sent me packing, it was because she was afraid, and rightly so, that I would be
completely
swept away by the powerful passion of which she had already experienced a small taste. Maybe I was meant to
reconsider
in a positive light the casual remark she had made about a bachelor’s being dangerous in an extramarital affair, and
precisely
now, in this state of violent infatuation, I should break my stubborn bachelorhood, for it was only in this way that I could protect her from myself, as I was protected from her. Perhaps this was cockeyed logic, but it also held out hope. Perhaps I really should get married. This simple thought began to throb inside me, rolling out in front of me on the black asphalt,
awakening
my blood, and without my being aware of it, I accelerated the speed of the motorcycle until I realized that my parents’ car had disappeared behind me. If they only knew what I was
thinking
, without of course knowing my secret reason, they would be overjoyed. I knew that they were making this tiring journey to a distant wedding with an expensive gift on the backseat of their car not only to express their affection for Eyal and their joy in his marriage, but also to send a clear signal to their only son, riding ahead of them in a leather jacket and black helmet, about what
was really important to them, important above all, and about how his solitude was beginning to alarm them. “Perhaps I really should get married,” I said, addressing myself aloud, and turned onto a dirt road and rode up a little hill, which gave me a clear view not only of the road leading from north to south, but also of the agricultural settlements surrounding the housing projects of Kiryat Gat with a belt of pleasant rusticity—green squares of alfalfa, recently plowed fields of rich, brown earth; even the ugly rows of plastic shone in the bright light of the sun like the
heating
elements of some gigantic stove. The traffic on the road flowed at a leisurely pace, and some time passed before I caught sight of my mother’s calm face, with a scarf tied around her head to protect her hair from the wind blowing into the open window. In the backseat sat a young hitchhiker, in spite of my warnings to my father—who liked picking up hitchhikers and listening to their views on the world—not to stop on the way, so he wouldn’t disrupt the smooth progress of our little convoy. So they’re
enjoying
themselves, I said to myself, and I let them pass me and get a little ahead before I started my motorcycle and raced behind them to see that my father didn’t suddenly turn off in the
direction
of Ashkelon.

At the gas station at the exit from Beersheba we all agreed that the journey up to now had been very easy and pleasant, and there was no doubt that we would arrive on time, and even
earlier
than we had planned. But after we passed the Yeruham mountain ridge, which was covered with a green down because of the abundant winter rains, and began to go deeper into the desert itself, the sky clouded over, and the warm reddish light in which we had bathed so enjoyably up to now turned murky and yellow. It would be very strange if it suddenly started raining here, I thought, and in fact the clouds over our heads managed to produce no more than a few big, cold drops, but at the same time an east wind began blowing so fiercely that it threatened the balance of the Honda. I had to slow down, and the distance between myself and my parents shrank. From now on I was no longer simply their guide and leader, but I felt as if they too were watching over me, and when the wind increased I let them pass me and rode behind them so the car would break the sudden gusts of wind that buffeted me and made the motorcycle sway violently. My mother kept her head turned, anxiously watching
my battle with the wind and making sure that my father didn’t lose me. From time to time she raised her hand in a strange gesture of greeting or encouragement. I had no doubt that she was secretly angry with me for my eccentric insistence on making the long trip on the Honda, but I was also sure that she would control herself and not allow a single word of rebuke or criticism to pass her lips now that the deed was done. And for this
self-control
I thanked her in my heart, and I waved back at her in a friendly fashion and went on battling with the savage wind. I was sure that at this pace we would only reach the wedding after dark, but when we slowly and carefully inched down the steep thousand-foot descent from the ridge to the Arava junction, I felt the wind subsiding, and immediately after a brief, warm shower, which lasted for a few minutes, gaps appeared in the murky, ugly sky, and fountains of a pure, mysterious, pinkish violet light
began
to well out of them as if in response to the call of the great sunset which was about to begin far away in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. My parents wanted to give me a chance to rest after my battle with the wind, but I was impatient to cover the remaining thirty miles, believing in my heart of hearts that keeping my promise to arrive at Eyal’s wedding before it got dark would bring me a secret reward. Eyal was waiting anxiously at the kibbutz gate, as if from there he would be able to suck in from a distance any wedding guests who might be deterred at the last minute by the length of the journey. When he saw our little convoy approaching his face lit up, and when we arrived he threw his arms around me and began hugging and kissing me joyfully. But he didn’t look like a happy bridegroom. His face was pale with tension, and there were dark rings under his eyes. “Come and say hello to my mother,” he said immediately, “she’s waiting for you,” and he climbed onto the back of the
motorcycle
to direct us to a little canyon hidden behind the buildings, where a large lawn surrounded a pool whose still waters reflected with delicate perfection the shadow of the wild crag overhanging them in the evening light. Round white tables were dotted over the lawn like giant mushrooms, but only a few people were
scattered
around them, gazing pensively at the long-haired youth perched on the diving board with a guitar on his knees. As he plucked the strings, perhaps just tuning them, the slow notes, without the benefit of loudspeakers or amplifiers, enveloped the
place in a feeling of pervasive goodwill. And it may have been that feeling above all which prompted my decision, which I made before I left that night, to find someone to marry.