Open Heart (50 page)

“I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t feel a thing, and I don’t feel anything now either,” Lazar apologized repeatedly to his wife for the little incident, and then turned to admire the baby and try to ingratiate himself with her. Shiva had been removed from her sling and was lying comfortably in the arms of the woman whom I suddenly wanted to drop to my knees before and beg for
forgiveness
for my earlier failure. Lazar indeed seemed perfectly healthy. And although I could have added something at this stage and shed some light on the medical picture with the little I had understood of Dr. Arnold’s analysis of the EKG results, I decided not to add to the general confusion but to leave the Lazars with Sir Geoffrey, for I knew I would be seeing them again later, at the
little reception the hospital had arranged for Lazar to recruit Jewish and non-Jewish supporters for the hospital in Israel. And that evening, in a black suit and a red tie, freshly washed and combed, Lazar looked healthy and fit. He spoke vigorously about the problems of our hospital in Tel Aviv, in a heavy Israeli accent and a basic but surprisingly effective English, which
reminded
me again of our trip together to India. Michaela, who was sitting next to me, listened to him with a mocking smile as she secretly breast-fed Shivi, for whom we were unable to find a baby-sitter.

My parents’ visit to Glasgow, which my aunt was looking
forward
to so much, was somewhat spoiled by a severe cold that my mother had probably caught from the baby. When my father told me about it on the phone, I remembered that streptococci in infants can cause a dangerous abscess in the throats of adults, and I rebuked myself for not warning my mother to avoid close contact with Shivi when she showed the first symptoms of her cold. Although my aunt looked after my mother devotedly and the two of them no doubt enjoyed reliving their childhood
experiences
, they were forced to stay at home while my father toured the wild and beautiful landscapes of the north of Scotland and the Isle of Skye with my uncle and my bachelor cousin, who was a physician like me. Because of my mother’s illness they had to stay in Glasgow for an extra three days, and when I met them at the train station and saw her pale face and heard her dry cough, I decided that in spite of the help she and my father gave Michaela with the baby, I should encourage them to return home as soon as possible, because the damp London air would only make things worse. From the station I drove them to their room, and when I carried the suitcase in, I was hit by a wave of longing for Dori, so much so that while they were hanging up their clothes I slipped into the house itself and made my way along the route which she had confidently charted, straight to the bedroom, which was still illuminated by the pale ray of light coming through the uncurtained corner of the window. I was startled to see a large, handsome leather suitcase standing on the double bed, covering the exact spot of my failure, which now, on second thought, seemed to me not just human and forgivable but even attractive in its velvety softness, until I felt a strange desire to fail in the same way again. I hurried back to my parents, who
disapproved
strongly of my intrusion on the privacy of their
anonymous
landlords, who as far as they knew were expected back any day now. They’re already back, I almost cried, but I controlled myself. “But what were you looking for?” my mother asked, looking very perturbed. “I see that you were here while we were away too.” She had spotted the two cups I had set out for Dori and myself and immediately come to her own conclusions. I had given up trying to lie to my mother when I was a child, not only because she had infinite patience and cunning in getting at the truth, but also because I had been taught that the punishment for a lie was always worse than the punishment for the truth. I
therefore
avoided answering her question directly and began telling them in detail about the Lazars’ visit. I described the little
medical
uproar over Lazar’s EKG and told them about the evening for the Friends of the hospital, which had gone very well in spite of Lazar’s elementary English, and in the end I told them of the cute little overall for Shiva and the promise he had given me that he would try to arrange a permanent half-time job for me at the hospital as an anesthetist.

“An anesthetist?” asked my father, without disguising his
disappointment
. “Only an anesthetist? And why only a half-time job?” he continued in the demanding tone he had adopted vis-
à-vis
Lazar ever since the trip to India. “Because for now that’s all that’s available,” I replied with a smile. “Dr. Nakash is retiring next year, but I’m not getting his job.”

“Dr. Nakash is already retiring?” my parents, who
remembered
him favorably from the wedding, exclaimed in surprise. I too had been surprised when I heard about his retirement. The darkness of his skin and the smooth freshness of his face had misled us about his real age. “But why did you have to bring Lazar and his wife to our room? I don’t understand.” My mother returned doggedly to the original subject of our conversation. I lowered my head slightly so she would not be able to look into my eyes and said, “Not both of them, only his wife. Lazar was busy checking out some equipment Sir Geoffrey wanted to offer our hospital, and in the meantime, so that she wouldn’t be bored, I took his wife to see Shivi in the nursery, and then I showed her around the hospital, and after that I took her for a little walk, and I thought I might as well show her this great room that Michaela found for you. Maybe they’ll want to rent it themselves
one day.” At this my mother pointed out that I had been wasting my time—the house was being sold in the summer, and the new owners would doubtless want to use all the rooms themselves. “So then I misled her,” I said, trying on the green cardigan my father had brought me—for the first time in his life on his own initiative—as a souvenir from the Isle of Skye. My mother was silent. Although she was not satisfied by my explanation for Mrs. Lazar’s visit to their room, what other explanation could she possibly imagine? She was not a worldly woman, and there was certainly nothing in her experience that might prompt her to guess the impossible truth. She gave up and sat there, sad and exhausted, coughing from time to time. I didn’t like the sound of her cough, but since I had never dared to auscultate her heart or lungs with a stethoscope, I could only hope that the cough syrups my physician cousin had given her would help.

But they didn’t, and for the last week of my parents’ stay in London she refrained from taking the baby into her arms, which I could see was a real sacrifice for her, since Shivi had obviously captured her heart, and not only because she was her
granddaughter
. Michaela, who could see my mother’s sadness, tried to set her fears at rest. “Take her,” she said persuasively. “You won’t infect her with anything, don’t worry. She’s as healthy as an ox.” But in spite of my mother’s longing to rock the sweet little “ox” in her arms, she was careful not to come too close to her and only gave her sometimes to my father, who looked at the baby in his arms with an expression of playful reproof. We were all sorry for my mother, whose visit to England was ending so sadly. To make up for it to her, a few days before they were due to leave Michaela insisted on inviting them to an Indian night. Stephanie volunteered to baby-sit, and I was instructed to take a day off, for our night began at twilight with a lavish meal at an excellent and far from cheap Indian restaurant, after which we were to attend a performance by traveling troupes of singers, musicians, dancers, storytellers, and acrobats who had been gathered from all over India and brought to Europe by the
Parisian
Cirque du Soleil, which had taken upon itself the mission of fostering the art of the Third World, in the belief that it was important and worthy of support. This belief was shared by Michaela, who was very excited about the event, not only
because
of the enjoyment she expected to have herself but also
because she was very curious to see how the rest of us would react. Since she had presented herself from the beginning as a missionary for India in the non-Indian world, she felt responsible for the evening’s entertainment, which was quite expensive, since the tickets were priced as if it were a charity performance. But as far as the money was concerned, at least, nobody could object, since the whole evening was being paid for by Michaela.

I joined in the general spirit of generosity and treated everyone to drinks before the meal and a bottle of wine to accompany it, which turned out to be a very good thing, for the slightly
inebriated
state in which we all reached the performance helped us gain a deeper appreciation of things that at first glance, and in spite of our goodwill toward Michaela, seemed completely
primitive
. Take the opening “act”: a half-naked fakir, his head covered with a mane of gleaming black hair which reached down to his chest, emerged from the audience, walked with slow, grave, thoughtful steps through the vast warehouse in the old port of London which had been converted into a hall for the
performance
, and climbed onto the huge, empty stage, which began to be suffused with the delicate shades of light of an Indian
morning
, just as I remembered them. He turned a little faucet, and in a profound silence began deliberately and at length to wash his hands, feet, and face. As he began to perform yoga exercises, facing the invisible sun, little troupes of performers entered one after the other, each dressed in a different color and carrying authentic folk instruments. Each group was composed of adults and children of various ages, who were referred to modestly in the program as “pupils,” and who, despite the astonishing
talents
that a number of them displayed, were anxiously attentive throughout the evening to the subtle signals of their adult
instructors
. Although each troupe was allotted its own
performance
time and they were grouped separately in the corners of the vast stage, which was supposed to symbolize the map of
India
, they kept up a special kind of dialogue throughout the
evening
. While singers from one troupe performed, a child acrobat from another troupe would spring without warning from his place and for two or three minutes turn daring somersaults and cartwheels until he suddenly froze into a many-limbed
contortion
, like the statuette next to Michaela’s bed or like some
primeval
animal that no longer exists in the world; then he would
unravel himself and go quietly back to his place. Or in the middle of a dance by three little girls, the ancient magician would
suddenly
rise from the heights of his podium at the back of the stage, throw some new magic into the air, and sink back to his seat. It was evident that a Western hand had intervened in the direction of the performance, in the attempt to create a meaningful tension between all the elements, whose power and uniqueness did not easily lend themselves to collaboration.

The primitiveness of these troupes was evident in the simple movements of the dancers and in the musical instruments, which consisted, for example, of two plain boards of wood banged
together
astonishingly fast, or chains of little bells tied around the ankles and tinkling with the movements of the feet, or even of a broken clay jar whose spout could be sucked to produce a sound resembling the rumble of approaching thunder. It was precisely this primitiveness that aroused a storm of emotion in Michaela. She had expected something more stylish, adapted to the “
limitations
” of the Western mentality, and here she was suddenly
confronted
, in the middle of gray London, with absolute
authenticity
, of the kind she remembered so vividly from the dark alleys of Calcutta or the train station of Bombay. Her cheeks burned, and tears shone in her great eyes, as if she had discovered something precious and intimate that had been lost to her and that she no longer believed she would find again, although in her heart of hearts she had not given up hoping. I noticed that in her
excitement
she kept losing her concentration, and her eyes would stray from the stage to us, as if to test our reactions and see if in us too the right soul was coming to life. And I think that we passed the test; not only I, to whom the Indian dancers and singers seemed to be reenacting the gradual and imperceptible process by which I had fallen in love the previous winter, but even my father—who my mother and I suspected would not have the patience for a performance without a plot—appeared tense and moved by the silent but clear and touching dialogue taking place between the “pupils” and the “teachers,” which began with acrobatic
exercises
agilely performed by a hefty Indian countrywoman and
emulated
by a little girl and boy, who were not daunted by the most amazing and dangerous tricks, and ended with a tall, gorgeous Indian woman wrapped in a glittering sari, who told with
growing
vehemence a long, impassioned story, which according to the
program notes concerned the struggles between the gods. When the performance came to an end, the children in the audience were invited to join the Indian artists dancing and singing on the stage, and the stage was suddenly filled with rosy-cheeked, blond English children, who began to imitate the Indians’ movements with such astonishing skill that it seemed as if they must be
possessed
by wandering Indian souls.

The audience rose to its feet in a storm of applause, including my shy father, who clapped enthusiastically while Michaela
actually
wept with joy and triumph at the success of her efforts to open closed hearts such as mine and my parents’ to the Indian experience. She was still determined to return to India, and she was afraid that since it “seemed to me” that I had already been there, and it “seemed to me” that I had grasped the principle of India, I would have no motive to return. She would repeat this formula with utter seriousness, as if my trip to India hadn’t been real, as if I hadn’t sailed down the Ganges River in the evening to see the burning of the bodies next to the ghats of Varanasi, as if I hadn’t gone into the temples of Bodhgaya and sat in the dark, rotting cinema in Calcutta. No, none of this counted with her, because it had all been secondary to the external aim of taking care of Einat and finding favor in the eyes of her parents. As long as I hadn’t been to India for my own sake, to try to purify my soul, which was in need, like all souls, of purification, it was as if I had never been there at all. Although I had given her my
promise
, after proposing to her in the roadside diner next to Lydda airport, that I would not stop her from going back to India, she now feared the opposition of my parents, whom she had grown very fond of during their visit to London. She knew they would be scandalized if she took off alone for India, with the baby or without her, and it was therefore important to her for me to accompany her, for part of the time at least, perhaps in the
context
of observing the sidewalk doctors of Calcutta—or the “
doctors
of the forgotten,” as the French called them—and thus take responsibility for her trip vis-à-vis my parents. On the face of things, it seemed strange that a woman as free and independent as Michaela, whose relations with her own parents were tenuous in the extreme, should worry about upsetting mine, but I was already aware that a bond had formed between my wife and my parents—especially my mother, who had apparently decided to
take her daughter-in-law under her wing in the wake of my
coldness
, which she sensed in spite of my efforts to appear smiling and attentive and to fulfill all my obligations, real or imaginary, toward Michaela.