Open Heart (76 page)

The next evening, after I had eaten my supper, despairingly aware of how my new dread of being alone was creeping up on me even in the early twilight hours, I decided to return to the hospital and explore the possibilities available to me in one of the empty operating rooms. The thought of going to sleep on the operating table and never waking up seemed increasingly attractive to me. But at seven o’clock my father phoned from Jerusalem. It appeared that when he came home from work that afternoon my mother wasn’t at home, although the insurance agency where she worked as a secretary was closed on Tuesday afternoons. He had found a vague note saying, “Gone out for a while, don’t worry.”

“Then why are you worried?” I said impatiently. “She’ll probably come back soon.” But about two hours later he phoned again, to say that there was no sign of her and nobody knew where she was. “You know I’m not a hysterical type,” he said, trying to defend himself, “but I don’t know where she could be.” We arranged to talk again in an hour, but after fifteen minutes he phoned again. It was after nine. He had conducted a little search of the house, and it seemed to him that the new suitcase which she had bought in London was missing. Perhaps she had lent it to somebody without telling him. “Surely she couldn’t have gone anywhere without giving me any warning?” he asked, and now he spoke in English, without even an occasional word in Hebrew, as if he had made up his mind to cling firmly to his mother tongue, which alone was capable of anchoring him in the chaos swirling around him. I asked him if he wanted me to come to Jerusalem. “Not yet. But if I have to go and report her missing to the police,” he added in a humorous tone, “you should come with me.” I promised him that I would stay near the phone, sensing how my father’s new anxiety, streaming to me from Jerusalem, was making me forget my own anxiety, which quickly turned to astonishment when he phoned with the update. Not only was the new suitcase missing, but her favorite summer dress was also gone. “Could she have suddenly taken it into her head to take a trip somewhere? But where?” he asked himself more than me, without any note of complaint or anger against his wife for leaving him without a word. “See if you can find her passport,” I suggested to him at ten o’clock at night. He went to look for it immediately, and fifteen minutes later he announced that he
had found her Israeli passport, but the British passport, which was always in the same place as his, was missing. Could she have taken it with her? But why? “I’ll give you an answer soon,” he promised with a peculiar confidence in his voice, and half an hour later he phoned to say that he had just concluded a long conversation with my mother’s sister in Glasgow, and even though she had been astonished and also a little amused by his announcement and couldn’t give him any leads, he had the feeling that she wasn’t as worried as she should have been. Did she know something that she was hiding from him? Or were the Scots just more phlegmatic than the English?

It was now clear to both of us that my mother had undertaken a mysterious journey to an unknown destination. If my father had been more familiar with her wardrobe, he might have been more able to find out what was missing, but he was indifferent to such details, and it was hard to get anything specific out of him. His concern, however, evaporated the minute he realized that my mother had gone on a trip. Now he began to see the whole thing in a different light. Although people might disappear in the course of a journey to an unknown destination, at least a journey progressed in a definite direction; a rational woman like my mother would never set off without a goal, and this notion calmed him. “I’m turning into Sherlock Holmes in my old age,” he said with a chuckle at one o’clock in the morning, astonishingly wide awake, and he reported on private investigations of her belongings in the secret corners of unfamiliar drawers. At five o’clock in the morning, between one fitful doze and another, I tried to call him, but there was no answer. I left a message with the hospital switchboard to say that my mother had disappeared, I had to go to Jerusalem at once to help my father look for her, and I wouldn’t be coming to work. Why couldn’t I have lied and said my mother was sick? I castigated myself as I sped along the expressway to Jerusalem in the teeth of an east wind that had blown up, watching the rays of the sun forcing their way through the haze. Luckily the key to the house was always on my key ring, and I was able to walk inside and find my father sleeping soundly in his bed.

“I want to keep calm,” he said, his face pink with the pleasure of sleep in spite of the vicissitudes of the night. “I know that she’s a sensible woman, with logical goals. But I’m sure that this
disappearance 
of hers is directed at you, not at me. I’ve sensed for a few weeks that something wasn’t right between you. That she was angry with you for something you did. But however hard I tried to get at the truth, she wouldn’t give me even a crumb. Perhaps you can tell me now what happened between you.” But I had vowed to my mother, who was now trying to direct my life by remote control, that I wouldn’t tell my father anything. And I certainly didn’t intend to add to his troubles now. Soon he would have to decide how to excuse his absence from work. Would he too feel that he had to tell the truth about his wife’s disappearance to his colleagues and make a laughingstock of himself? But at half-past seven the phone rang. It was my aunt, talking excitedly from Glasgow. My mother was on her way to Calcutta to bring the baby back. She would land there in a couple of hours. Michaela knew that she was coming. It seemed that my aunt had not been able to rest all night long, and eventually she had succeeded in getting the details of my mother’s sudden flight out of Edgar, our pale, thin London relation, for he was the only one my mother had trusted enough to confide in.

With the news of my mother’s flight to Calcutta a profound calm descended on my father, and he got dressed and went to work. “If you find out something new, phone me at the office,” he said as he left the house. And I stayed alone in my parents’ apartment as in the days when I stayed home sick from school. I didn’t call the hospital. Since I had made the bizarre announcement of my mother’s disappearance, I might as well give it time to sink in and take on the menacing dimensions it deserved before I canceled it. But since I had remembered to slip the little bottle Nakash had given me into my pocket before leaving for Jerusalem, so that I would have something to give my father to calm his anxiety, I took the second half of the little sleeping pill and swallowed it, saying to myself as I did so, Now that my mother’s flying over India to bring the baby home, I’ll need all my reserves of strength for her return, when she will undoubtedly lay the whole burden on me.

When my father returned in the early afternoon he found me sleeping deeply, and he didn’t wake me, for unlike my mother he had always respected my sleep. He let me go on sleeping even when he received another phone call from my aunt in Glasgow, who until my mother’s return from India served as the
go-between 
for us and Edgar, the strange relation whom my mother had rightly chosen to guide her on his journey because of his connections with firms doing business in India; through telephone calls, telegrams, and faxes, he was able to guide her safely to her destination by means of faithful Indian clerks who waited for her at airports and train stations, making modest but respectable arrangements for the comfort of an elderly woman traveling alone and returning with a slightly feverish infant, straight there and back, without looking right or left at the glorious and terrifying abundance of life that surrounded her.

My mother left on Tuesday morning and returned on Friday evening. Her whole trip took seventy-seven hours. For about twenty-six of them she was in the air, and for about six she traveled by train. Since I returned to work in the hospital on Thursday and I didn’t want to complicate things for my colleagues with another absence, I didn’t go to the airport to meet them but let my father go instead. I took off from the emergency room as soon as I could get away, and as dusk began to fall I was already racing to Jerusalem on my motorcycle, with my visor raised so I could enjoy the scents of the wild grasses and early blossoming of the almond trees. In my parents’ house the lights were on in all the rooms, and I quickly saw that there were new lines on my mother’s exhausted face, but also a new radiance. Shivi, whom my mother now insisted on calling Shiva, like Michaela’s Indian friends, was really in pretty bad shape, though not at all critical. She was thinner and browner, and in her little yellow sari, with the third eye (which my mother had not wiped off during the entire journey home) shining between her eyes, she reminded me for a moment of the Indian children who had run after me when I went down to the Ganges. In our time apart, she had learned to walk, and since she now recognized me immediately—not like the time at the airport when the two English girls had brought her back from England—she began tottering toward me. I swept her up into the air and clasped her little body tightly to my chest. All this time I had thought of her as being a part of Michaela, and I hadn’t realized how much she was also a part of me. It appeared that Michaela had agreed to let my mother have her without any arguments. She was a realistic woman, and she knew that there were risks for a small child in India. In the short,
stormy night my mother had spent in Calcutta, she had received the impression that Michaela’s spiritual attraction to India was reinforced by the simple human experience of working with the sidewalk doctors, which gave her a feeling of worth and led the Indians to regard her as almost a doctor herself, even though she had never graduated from high school. Nevertheless, my mother believed that she would soon return. “But will you be able to take her back?” she asked, still not looking me in the eye. “Because if not, you’ll have to come back to Jerusalem.”

“Did you remember to get vaccinated before you left?” I asked my mother, who now realized that she may have endangered her health by her journey. But my father was overjoyed, getting down on his knees to watch the movements of the little girl, whom I now set down gently on the floor to continue her tottering investigations. He did not seem to bear my mother a grudge for her disappearance; in fact, he was very proud of what she had done. Had he kissed or hugged her, I wondered, when she emerged from the airport terminal? I had never seen them kiss or embrace in my presence or in the presence of others; sometimes I wondered how I had been born at all.

At
last
the
door
opens,
and
slowly
they
wheel
the
mystery’s
bed
out
of
the
operating
room
on
its
way
to
the
intensive
care
unit.
It
is
sunk
in
a
deep
sleep
and
wrapped
in
white
bandages,
con
nected
to
infusions
and
flickering
instruments,
but
none
of
the
nurses
waiting
in
intensive
care
knows
what
to
do
for
it
or
how
to
help
it,
for
no
knife
or
saw
has
been
brandished
over
it,
no
tube
or
needle
inserted
to
implant
what
was
amputated
at
the
dawn
of
time.
Even
if
no
drop
of
blood
was
shed,
it
is
still
suffer
ing
torments
after
a
long
night
of
stubborn
delving
into
a
black
and
riven
soul.
And
perhaps
they
do
well
to
bring
a
big
cage
in
which
two
wild
birds
are
chained
together
into
the
room
full
of
morning
light.
Perhaps
the
birds
will
relieve
his
suffering
with
their
song.
Indeed,
for
the
first
time
a
smile
breaks
on
his
face.
Has
the
first
tender
young
plant
already
taken
root?
ask
the
nurses
clustered
around
his
bed.
Among
them
is
the
little
girl
left
behind
in
the
kitchen
in
her
school
uniform,
who
has
grown
tall
and
beautiful
and
stolen
in
unobserved,
disguised
as
a
nurse,
to
take
care
of
him.
But
the
ray
of
light
shattering
on
the
emerald
of
her
eyes
betrays
her.
And
then
I
can’t
stop
myself
any
longer
from
bursting
into
this
dream.
My
darling,
I
whisper
to
her,
my
darling,
my
love.