Open Heart (44 page)

But had the idea really come from Lazar, who wanted to save his English colleague from an embarrassing situation and at the same time give me a consolation prize and a little hope, or had it actually come from her, because she was afraid and wanted to get rid of me after seeing how quickly I had fulfilled her implicit request to turn myself into a married and therefore more possible lover? Maybe she had had nothing to do with it, and Lazar
himself
had dimly sensed my feelings for his wife and wanted
unconsciously
to get me out of the way. All these thoughts were still running around inside my head when I said good-bye to the last of the guests, but I could not share them with anybody,
including
, of course, Michaela, who heard about Lazar’s offer only after the wedding was over, late that night in Eyal’s mother’s house. I was sorry I hadn’t thought of bringing back a doggie bag with some of the delicacies served at the wedding, to compensate
her for what she had missed, and also to quiet the pangs of hunger that now assailed me, until Eyal’s mother, who had
already
gone to bed, got up to make me a salad and an omelet in spite of my protests and apologies. Only then did I tell them about Lazar’s offer for me to leave within the month for a year’s exchange at a hospital in London. Eyal’s mother was pleased for us, but in Michaela the proposal lit a veritable fire of enthusiasm. Her weariness vanished and her spirits soared, not only at the idea of going abroad but also because of England’s connection with India. And so when we went to bed in Eyal’s old bedroom, which still contained some of his childhood toys, Michaela’s
passion
flared, as if the strangeness of the house awaiting us in
London
had combined with the strangeness of Eyal’s room to double her desire. There was no way I could withstand this double
desire
, especially on our wedding night, but since I was afraid of embarrassing Eyal’s mother, who for some reason was still
roaming
around the house, with the noise of our lovemaking, I kept my lips pressed to Michaela’s and inserted my tongue in her mouth to stifle or at least muffle any possible cries or moans during our prolonged intercourse.

But the next night, in the hotel next to the Dead Sea, so
seductive
in its strangeness, I decided to resist Michaela’s tireless lust. I did not want to subject our little English embryo to any
additional
jolting after all the jolting she had already suffered on the back of the motorcycle and was still to suffer on our approaching trip to England. We both already thought of the baby as an
English
baby par excellence, with the British citizenship she would inherit from me reinforced by her birth on English soil. Michaela couldn’t stop talking about the trip, and since she had been
suffering
from a mild depression over the past few months due to the loss of her freedom—first by the premature return from
India
, over which she was still grieving, and then by our hasty marriage, which was now compounded by the baby, who
however
sweet and good she was would still tighten the collar around Michaela’s neck—it was no wonder that the trip seemed to her like an escape hatch to—who knows—those magical and radiant realms, whose fascination I could hardly guess at, for I had flitted past them like distant lightning. In contrast to Michaela, I was more confused than excited by Lazar’s unexpected offer. First, because it meant a separation from the woman I could not get
out of my thoughts. And even though I knew how narrow the scope of my hopes in that direction was, I also knew that I could always get on my motorcycle at the appropriate time and within a few minutes take up my position in the entrance to one of the buildings next to her house or her office, to watch her going in or coming out, smiling and pleased with herself, stepping lightly, apart from that slight pampered dragging of her left foot. And I hadn’t had enough of her mother’s apartment yet either, which still held the memory of the marvelous pleasure I had enjoyed on the day I signed the lease, which I didn’t know whether to
continue
or to cancel. Michaela, who had taken an instant dislike to the apartment, wanted us to cancel the lease, so that we could leave for England with a clean slate. She wanted to pack our things in crates and leave them in a warehouse next to the
harbor
, where her stepfather worked. “They can stay there till we come back,” she said, and added suddenly with a mischievous smile, “if we come back.” It was no problem for her, of course, because all her possessions could easily be packed in one not very large crate. But I refused to store all the clothes, furniture, books, and other possessions I had accumulated over the course of my life in a dubious warehouse next to the beach, and I couldn’t impose them on my parents either. Nor did I want to give up the connection with my landlady, for whose sake I had rented the apartment in the first place. So I suggested to my friend Amnon that he come and live in the apartment and look after our things until we returned, in exchange for a percentage of the rent. To my surprise he agreed, even though the apartment was far from his place of work, and it was hard to find parking there too. Ever since I had started going out with Michaela, Amnon had strengthened his ties with me, because Michaela had more
patience
with him than I did, and when I went out in the late afternoon to assist Dr. Nakash at the Herzliah hospital, she would invite him to come and have supper with her before going to his night watchman’s job. His doctoral thesis was still stuck in the same place, and there were moments when I blamed myself and my confused speech that night on the way from Jericho to Jerusalem, about the relationship between matter and spirit, for his plight, as if my words had actually penetrated his mind and begun to disturb him in spite of the contempt and skepticism with which he had greeted them at the time. Perhaps my
philosophical
speech had merged in his mind, too, with the warning I had given him that same night about my intention to get married. And when he realized some time later that I was talking about Michaela—whom he liked so much that I suspected he had fallen a little bit in love with her, without admitting it to himself, for his loyalty to me was absolute—my theoretical speculations had joined with her erotic attractions, and he began paying frequent visits to our apartment in order to talk to me, and especially to Michaela, about the way in which matter could be transformed into spirit. I was already getting tired of him, but Michaela had a limitless capacity to sit and listen to him, and to cloud the issue still further by embroidering my own disorganized and primitive theory with all kinds of mystical mumbo-jumbo she had brought back from India.

I had no doubt whatsoever that we would return at the end of the year. Otherwise I might lose the secret back door through which, according to Lazar and his bureaucratic metaphor, I had already returned to the hospital. He also promised to come and visit us during our year in England. “That would be wonderful,” I said with genuine delight. “We’ll be happy to put you up, or both of you, if Dori comes with you.”

“Of course she’ll come,” said Lazar immediately. “If she
insisted
on going along to India, do you think she won’t insist on coming to England? You’ve already seen for yourself how hard it is for her to stay by herself.” Indeed I had, and the thought of a possible meeting in England gave me the confidence to notify Dr. Nakash that I was resigning from the remunerative work as his assistant anesthetist. To his credit, Nakash encouraged me to go. “Try to gain experience in anesthesiology there, together with your work in internal medicine,” he advised me. “The subjects are connected. It may be an old hospital with obsolete
equipment
, but you’ll always find someone unexpected whom you can learn something from.” My parents were of course delighted at our approaching trip to England, in spite of the separation; but when I told them, in Michaela’s absence, about the expected birth in six months’ time, and tried, not without difficulty, to convince them that I myself had been ignorant of the pregnancy
until after the wedding, because Michaela hadn’t wanted to
influence
my decision to marry her, they were flabbergasted, as if they had only now grasped the wild side of Michaela’s nature, in
addition
to the ethical and independent aspects of her character. But their joy at being grandparents soon asserted itself and
overcame
everything else. They immediately decided to postpone their visit to England. Instead of arriving in three months’ time, in the autumn, they would arrive in the middle of winter, for the birth, and they would also stay longer than they had originally planned. The idea that their granddaughter would be born in the land of their birth amused them, but also excited them. “It will be as if we returned to England,” said my father, turning red with pleasure and embarrassment at the curious thought. “
Exactly
,” I laughed. “Shiva. Return. That’s exactly the name Michaela wants to give the baby, not because of you but because of its Indian sound.”

Michaela, flushed from the long walk she had taken to give me a chance to be alone with my parents, came in and gave us a deep, proud, triumphant look. My father couldn’t resist hugging and kissing her as soon as she came in, forgetting his shyness now that a part of his own flesh and blood was inside her. My mother too went up to embrace her, even though I knew that she was secretly upset by Michaela’s deception. The speed of my transformation from a stubborn bachelor to the father of a child seemed to her unwise, and perhaps too much for me to cope with. But the news flooded her with joy nevertheless. I told Michaela that I had already confided the strange name she wanted to give the baby to my parents, and she was insulted and protested indignantly, “It’s not strange at all. That’s what we’re going to call her, Shiva, whether with a
vav
or a
beth
we’ll decide later,” and she explained to my parents the mythological
meaning
of the god Shiva, the Destroyer, and how he complemented the god Brahma, the Creator, and Vishnu, the Preserver. My
parents
smiled. “Don’t argue about it now, it’s silly. There’s plenty of time to decide. You’ll change your minds a thousand times,” they said, but I already felt that this would be my daughter’s name, and all I could do now was fight for it to be spelled with a
beth
and not with a
vav
, like the Indian god, whose name I remembered calling out to the barefoot boatman rowing me out between the ghats of Varanasi. Meanwhile we had to hide the
fact of Michaela’s pregnancy from Lazar so he would not relax his pressure on his English colleague to find her a part-time job, not for fear that she would be bored in London, since Michaela always found something to interest her, but to supplement my salary, which would, it transpired, be extremely modest, since it would be calculated according to the shekel salary I would have received if I had remained at the hospital.

But it was too late to change our minds, or even to grumble. We were both young, and our needs were modest. My parents, though, after telephone consultations with the family in England, decided to break into a savings account and give us some cash to tide us over until I received my first paycheck. With the money from the sale of the motorcycle we bought the plane tickets and good winter clothes, and the remainder we deposited in my bank account to cover the postdated checks for my share of the rent. In the plane Michaela was exuberant; leaving Israel had made her spirits soar, even though we were sailing west and not east. She believed that India was spiritually and intellectually closer to England than it was to Israel. I, in contrast, sat next to her in the doldrums, nervous and anxious about the future. Ever since my mysterious infatuation with Dori had begun, my life had been flowing along a crooked, winding course, because of the
contradictory
and ambivalent signals I received from the impossible object of my desire. Now I was being swept far away from her, and apart from Lazar’s promise that they might come for a short visit to England, I had nothing to hang on to. And it was
supposed
to be all for her: the hasty marriage, the rented apartment, even the growing dependence on Lazar and his schemes. I thought again of all the people putting themselves out for me, especially my parents, who knew nothing of my real motives. It would have been more honest to confess to them and ease my conscience. I looked at Michaela, whose great clear eyes reflected the radiant blue sky shining above the clouds. If I suddenly told her that I had fallen in love with Lazar’s wife, what would she say? Would the broad, magnanimous spirit of her Hindu or
Buddhist
beliefs calm and soothe the pain of this passion and absorb it into the common stream of our marriage?

Because this was how Michaela defined marriage: it was a “common stream,” and that’s all it was. In the framework of such a tolerant definition, even a sudden confession of the kind I
had in mind was entitled to be carried along on the current, like an uprooted tree trunk. But I decided to hold my peace. Nor, in fact, did I have anything to confess, for in the hectic month since our marriage I had had no contact with Dori except for one telephone call, in which I had asked her if we could sublet the apartment to Amnon until we returned from England. About the expected birth I said nothing, not only because I was afraid she might not want to continue the lease, which was intended for a single tenant and not an expanding family, but also because I didn’t want to draw attention to my sexual life with Michaela and give her an excuse for breaking off relations with me—as if our marriage were a mere formality. And indeed, although I could hear people going in and out of her office, she was very friendly, and her joyful, tender voice filled me with such lust that when I put the receiver down I felt drops of moisture on my penis, as if it were weeping. She too, like my parents’ friends, recalled the wedding as an exceptionally enjoyable occasion,
perhaps
because of the high spirits of our family from Scotland. Even the strictness of the young rabbi, whose beauty she
remarked
on, did not seem to her annoying or out of place. “It’s a good thing to be serious about the world sometimes,” she said, and her laughter flooded the receiver. Then she praised me for taking up her husband’s offer and admitted that she had had something to do with it. It was her legal mind that had
remembered
my English passport when Lazar told her about the
complications
they had run into with the exchange program in
London
. “Maybe you just wanted to get rid of me?” I asked in suspense, but without anger. She laughed again. “Maybe I did. But is it possible? I see that you’re putting your friend into the apartment to make sure it’s there when you come back.”