Open Heart (58 page)

“How do you get there?” I asked the man at the information desk in the entrance lobby, who told me what I wanted to know but insisted that at this hour of night the place was locked and there was nobody there. “Don’t talk nonsense,” I said angrily, “people die at night too,” and I went down to the basement. On the stairs I met three doctors, whom I immediately recognized as Dr. Amit, deputy head of cardiothoracic surgery, Dr. Yarden, the anesthetist who had taken part in Lazar’s operation, and the
elderly
pathologist Dr. Hefetz. I knew that they were coming from the place that I was going to. To my surprise, they not only recognized me but did not seem surprised to see me there, as if it were only natural that I should be going down to the morgue at two in the morning. “Were you there when it happened?” they asked immediately, as if looking for someone to blame. “No,” I said, “but ever since the operation I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the possibility of ventricular tachycardia.” Dr. Amit shook his head. He didn’t agree with me; perhaps the
immediate
cause of death had been the arrhythmia, but he
suspected
that the deterioration in Lazar’s condition stemmed from an infarct caused by an occlusion in one of the bypasses. All
three of them seemed very depressed by what had happened. “This death won’t do the reputation of our hospital any good,” pronounced Dr. Hefetz, who agreed to come down with me and show me the body. “But there isn’t much left to see,” he warned me as he turned back down the stairs—for Lazar, like the rest of us, had donated his organs to the hospital research laboratories. It seemed strange to me that the pathologist agreed without any hesitation to my request, as if he, too, understood that I had some special rights here. Had he heard about the trip to India? He opened the door leading to the two adjoining basement rooms. In one of the corners stood a large refrigerator with rows of big iron drawers. He pulled one of them out. I saw a smaller, shrunken Lazar, crudely stitched up after the removal of his
internal
organs. “Did they take his heart too?” I asked. “Of course not,” Dr. Hefetz answered in surprise.

I suddenly felt calm and wide awake. I knew that I shouldn’t wake my parents at this hour of the night, but I felt that I had to share my feelings with them. I called them up and told them about Lazar’s sudden death. Like all kindhearted people on such occasions, they were shocked and saddened. Again and again they wanted to know how and why it had happened, as if from their home in Jerusalem they could understand what important professors at the hospital like Hishin and Levine had failed to understand. Suddenly I wanted to console them and tell them not to grieve, for Lazar’s soul had already been reincarnated in me, but I knew that they would think my sorrow had driven me out of my mind, and so I only asked them for my aunt’s telephone number in Glasgow so I could get in touch with Michaela. I took a beeper from the emergency room, switched it on, and stole into the administrative wing, which I was sure that the secretary had forgotten to lock up in the commotion. I was right. The door to Lazar’s office was open, and I didn’t even have to put on the light, because there was enough moonlight for me to see the numbers on the telephone. I found Michaela and Stephanie with my family in Scotland. I told Michaela about Lazar’s sudden death and asked her to cut her trip short and come home. There was a silence on the other side of the line. “Look,” I said
aggressively
, “I know you’re entitled to another week in Britain, but it wouldn’t be right to leave me to cope with the baby alone now in the new situation that’s arisen.”

“What situation are you talking about?” asked Michaela in surprise. For a moment I was angry that she couldn’t understand by herself, but I tried to stay cool. “I’m asking you, Michaela.” I spoke quietly but firmly. “It’s not only Shivi who needs you; I need you too. You’re the only one I can talk to about what’s happening to me. Because nobody else would believe that Lazar’s soul has entered my body.” There was a profound silence on the other end of the line again. But it was no longer the silence of resistance. It was a new, different silence. And I knew that what I had just told her would capture her imagination and excite her curiosity so much that she would cancel her trip to Skye and fly home.

Twice during the week of mourning I paid a condolence call to the Lazars’. The first time alone, the day after the funeral, and the second time with Michaela, who returned to the country four days after our midnight telephone conversation. I might have paid a third visit, with my parents, who vacillated between going to the funeral and paying a condolence call until I persuaded them that their relations with the Lazars did not justify either of these measures and it would be enough to send a sympathy letter, which I helped them formulate over the phone. So that I could perform the overt and covert duties imposed on me by Lazar’s sudden death, I asked my parents to keep Shiva with them until Michaela arrived. The overt duties were clearer than the covert ones, and involved the funeral itself, which was scheduled for the day after his death so the hospital administration and his many friends there could organize a dignified ceremony and try to
rehabilitate
the hospital’s reputation in the wake of damaging rumors about a failed operation and an incorrect diagnosis. I myself was careful at first to maintain medical confidentiality, precisely
because
I felt that I would be a more reliable source of information than Professor Levine, who was so stunned and grief-stricken by the death of his friend, which had taken place not only in his department but under his personal care, that he retired into a corner and delegated some of his authority to his deputy as a kind of private punishment for himself. In this way he succeeded in diverting most of the darts of criticism from himself to
Professor
Hishin, who had “stolen” the operation from cardiothoracic surgery and brought in an expert from another hospital. True, patients occasionally died after bypass surgery in the
cardiothoracic
surgery department too, but these were considered “
internal
” deaths, while Lazar’s was “external,” brought from
outside
in an act of treachery. Since I was still convinced that the cause of Lazar’s death was not connected to the surgery but stemmed from a mistaken diagnosis, when the criticism
intensified
I felt I had to break my silence and defend Professor Hishin from his detractors in the hospital, among them people I hardly knew—physicians, nurses, and members of the administrative staff—who began buttonholing me in the corridor the day after Lazar’s death and questioning me about what had really
happened
. Dr. Nakash, who happened in on one of these corridor conversations, immediately took me aside and warned me, with uncharacteristic sharpness, to stop letting my mouth run away with me. At the funeral too, which began in the plaza in front of the hospital, I sensed that he and his wife were deliberately
keeping
close to me and discreetly trying to prevent me from joining the inner circle of mourners, family and intimate friends now surrounding Dori, who was standing at a careful and fearful
distance
from her beloved husband.

Mourners were packed into the plaza—their numbers
exceeded
all my expectations, and many appeared to be truly
grieving
, for throughout the crowd I saw tears sparkling in the eyes of men and women as they listened to the eulogy delivered by the medical director of the hospital, a gray, retiring man who began by reading in a low clear voice from the notes he had prepared about Lazar’s life history. Lazar had been born and brought up only two or three streets away from the hospital. In his youth he had studied medicine, but in his second year he had had to
abandon
his studies because of his father’s illness and go to work to support his younger brother and sister, recognizable in the circle surrounding Dori by their physical resemblance to their brother. From a distance it seemed that the two of them were careful not to get too close to Dori, as if they feared that this pampered, vivacious woman’s rage at being left alone by her husband might be greater and more violent than her grief. Even her mother kept her distance, standing with her grandchildren on either side of her, the three supporting each other. Only Hishin, perhaps by virtue of his medical authority, which in the eyes of the Lazars was absolute, dared to approach Dori and take her arm as she stood steadily on her straight legs, her left foot even at this
difficult
time in the lax, slightly out-turned position I always found so appealing. Hishin had honored the occasion by wearing a
black suit, but instead of a skullcap he wore an old black
baseball
cap on his head, which gave him the air of a sorrowful bird. As someone who had stood at his side for many hours next to the operating table and learned to sense every shift in his mood, I felt even from a distance the tremendous tension in his movements, as if he were about to whip out a knife and operate on himself. I did not yet know that he had claimed the right to eulogize Lazar at the graveside and that he was going over the first sentences of his speech in his mind as his little eyes scanned the hostile
audience
. Dori’s eyes too wandered over the people around her, but it did not look as if any sentences, or even words, were coming into her mind. She was so stunned by the catastrophe that she didn’t even realize how her eyes, encountering the familiar faces of her friends, lit up, even at this terrible time, in the old, friendly smile, although the light was so dim and weak that I thought my heart would break.

The next day in the Lazars’ apartment, among the many
people
filling the large living room—Dori wearing the black velvet jumpsuit I remembered, her face pale and free of makeup—I heard her asking about the eulogies that had been delivered
outside
the hospital, admitting that she had been unable to take in what was being said. But although the people surrounding her tried their best, none of them could remember the details. When I could no longer restrain myself, I intervened from the other end of the room and repeated almost word for word not only Lazar’s biography as sketched by the medical director but also the
emotional
phrases of the mayor, who had obviously felt both
affection
and respect for Lazar in spite of the bitter financial
disagreements
between them. But there was no need to repeat Professor Hishin’s words next to the freshly dug grave to her, both because she, like everyone else there, could not forget their power and eloquence and because Hishin himself was now sitting beside her with the strange young woman who was his mistress or perhaps already his wife and who lived for most of the year in Europe. During the week following the funeral he went to see the Lazars twice a day, partly to give his support and protection to the widow of his good friend, who was a beloved friend in her own right, and maybe partly to confront, if necessary, any complaints against him then and there. So it was only natural that in the quiet stir of people coming and going he would not overlook my
presence. Even though I was sitting in a remote corner of the room, far away from him, I could feel his eyes returning to me, trying to guess if I intended to surprise Dori with something she did not yet know. But I had no desire to surprise anybody. The heaviness I had felt inside ever since Lazar’s death, accompanied from time to time by a slight dizziness, as if I had no control over what was happening inside me, had banished any complaints from my mind, especially any complaints against Hishin, who could never have guessed that the pity that flooded me at the sight of Dori’s and Einat’s tearstained eyes was accompanied by a great and paralyzing joy, which made me forget my manners, and instead of getting up to take my leave after half an hour and giving my seat to one of the other people who kept streaming in through the open door, I stubbornly sat where I was, nodding somberly to acquaintances from the hospital, as if I too were one of the mourners here.

While I could not count myself as a member of the grieving family, I felt that I secretly belonged here in this apartment,
although
I had only briefly visited it twice before, including on the eve of the trip to India, and from the moment I crossed the threshold I felt warmly and intimately at home. Ever since the return from India it had been the scene of my constant fantasies, and now the wounded spirit of the master of the house, which had been compassionately gathered into my soul, enabled me not only to get up and go into the kitchen without asking permission to pour myself a glass of cold water, but even to advance down the hallway and peep into the bedroom where I had given Lazar and his wife their vaccination shots before we left for India. After all, Dori, who had invaded the bedroom of a strange house in London, could hardly rebuke me for standing mesmerized in the doorway of her large, elegant bedroom, where the soft autumn twilight turning the big windows red only intensified my distress at the sight of the female clothes thrown onto the bed and the chairs, the scattered shoes, the drawers left open in a kind of chaos, which to the best of my knowledge would have infuriated Lazar. No wonder I jumped at the light touch on the back of my neck. It was Hishin. His tall body had seemed slightly stooped during the last few days, and his little eyes were tired and
bloodshot.
Was he looking for something too, or had he simply
followed
me here? He stood silently next to me, as startled as I was
at the sight of the chaos created by the despairing and perhaps also angry widow. “Have you ever been here before?” He
surprised
me by the strange question. “A long time ago”—I blushed—“before the trip to India.” Suddenly it occurred to me that he wasn’t referring to the apartment but to the bedroom itself, and I continued hesitantly, “I vaccinated both of them here before the trip.” He nodded his head. There was something
profoundly
attentive in his manner toward me. Ever since Lazar’s death, and despite the great difference in our status, I had felt that there were unanswered questions between us, connected more with medical ethics than with medicine itself. But since I had never seen him so vulnerable before, I was careful to avoid saying anything that might upset his confidence in the natural course of events leading to the death and in the impossibility of preventing it. My curiosity on one point, however, was so intense that I couldn’t stop myself from asking: how did Professor Adler, who had performed the operation, explain what had happened? “Bouma?” cried Hishin angrily, and the childish nickname seemed intended now to shrink the Jerusalem master back to his natural human dimensions. “He doesn’t know anything about it. He left the country right after the operation and he won’t be back until next week. But what can he tell us, Benjy, that we don’t already know? You know yourself that the ventricular tachycardia had nothing to do with the surgery, which you saw succeed with your own eyes.” A warm surge of happiness welled up in me to hear Hishin using my diagnosis as if it had now been confirmed as the absolute, undisputed truth.

Glowing with the excitement of this unexpected triumph, I went on looking at the bedroom, which suddenly filled with
rose-tinted
shadows that swallowed up the chaos left by the woman with whom I had fallen impossibly in love, and I decided to reward Hishin, who, although he had not found a place for me in his department and preferred my rival to me, had nevertheless seen me as the ideal man to send to India. I began to praise the eulogy he had delivered at the cemetery. “Your eulogy was
terrific
,” I said, “if that’s an appropriate word in this context.” He closed his eyes impatiently and bowed his head modestly in
acknowledgment
as he listened to the footsteps of the people going in and out of the front door. Although he had already received a lot of compliments on his speech, it seemed that my response was
important to him. “I feel so sorry for her,” I added, unable to restrain myself. “What will she do without him?” Hishin gave me a quick glance, somewhat surprised, as if he considered it inappropriate for a young man like me to speak in a tone of such concern about people who were almost as old as his parents. “She’s incapable of staying by herself for a minute,” I added in a resentful voice, which included a note of despair. “In what sense is she incapable of staying by herself?” he said in surprise, as if by this cunning denial of a well-known fact he might be able to obtain some secret knowledge hitherto hidden from him. But I realized that I had better be careful, precisely because the events of the last few days had drawn us closer together, and the
devastating
guilt which continued to tear him apart, even if he didn’t admit it, would sharpen his awareness of the abyss gradually opening up inside me. The words of the eulogy he had delivered between the Kaddishes were still echoing in my mind. Had he prepared them in advance, or had they really welled out of him spontaneously with the grief and the tears breaking out all around him as the grave was filled? When I saw the men lifting the stretcher to slide the body into the grave, I had eluded the invisible grip of Nakash and his wife in order to break into the inner circle, and I had seen Hishin supporting Dori, whose legs suddenly gave way beneath her as she began to sob. He waited until she steadied herself and only then opened two buttons of his black suit, exposing a tie that was surprisingly red, as if he had wanted to tear a symbolic wound in his own chest, and delivered his astonishing speech, whose gist I repeated to Michaela on the way back from the airport. And although Michaela would no doubt have preferred to hear first about Shivi, who had recognized her mother immediately in spite of the long separation and was now lying serenely in her lap, she
restrained
herself and listened attentively as I repeated Hishin’s words to her, for she knew that if I thought something that had been said there was important to me, it was important to her too. Hishin began his speech with the unequivocal statement that the hospital director had been worthy of the title “the ideal man”—not as a cheap romantic compliment, but on the grounds of a realistic examination of the personality of the deceased, who, although he had been forced to abandon his medical studies in his youth as a result of his parents’ difficulties, had never
abandoned
the vocation of medicine in the wider sense of the word and had joined the administrative staff of the hospital, where because of his energy and talent he had soon risen to a position of power and authority. Here Hishin straightened himself up next to the fresh grave and began to describe in an almost critical tone the nature and extent of the power that Lazar had
accumulated
as the administrative director, secure and permanent in his position while the medical directors changed every few years. He went on to describe the way in which Lazar had used his power to serve the medical staff efficiently and well, on the condition that they put loyalty to their patients first. His power, explained Hishin, was built on two principles: “knowledge of the details, and acknowledgment of limits.” There wasn’t a detail in the life of the hospital, from the numbers of doctors absent on leave to a broken cogwheel in the dialysis machine, that Lazar considered beneath his notice, and the moment he knew something he turned it into his responsibility. But the vast scope of the
responsibility
that Lazar was prepared to take on himself, continued Hishin, had never blurred his awareness of the precise limits of his authority, especially with regard to the medical staff—he
respected
the doctors in the hospital and never interfered with their professional judgment.