Open Heart (63 page)

But she didn’t want any part of it, and with a savage gesture she pulled my hair as if to raise me to my feet and demanded clear protestations of love from me, as if she were no longer prepared to put up with the panic-stricken silence of our last encounter in bed. Because her feverish weakness gave this
unexpected
demand strength, I began, without releasing my grip on her, kissing and stroking her face and her hair and groping my way down the hallway to the bedroom, which seemed to have been taken over by chaos again, I began to seek and also to find new words, not only to describe my impossible love for her but also to try to tell her of the passionate desire aroused in me by the new obligation I felt not to leave her alone. “I know why you’re looking for me. I know exactly why,” I repeated in my emotion, and I helped her get back into the big bed, torn between the natural desire of a doctor to cover her with the blanket and balance the inner heat of her body with the heat of the air around her and the impulse to go on exposing her flesh, to undo the buttons of the thick old sweater so that I could pull up the
nightgown
and look at the strong breasts resting peacefully and
abundantly
above that round, pampered belly. And for the first time since my arrival, I saw a weak smile crossing her face, and
although
she seemed willing to postpone covering herself with the blanket, she was not ready to allow me to make love to her before I told her how much I loved her or explained my
attraction
to her in the light of the deepest secret of her being.

“It was Lazar.” I couldn’t resist betraying her dead husband as I went on stroking and kissing her arms and her bare legs. “Right at the beginning, when I wanted to know the real reason that you insisted on coming with us to India.” She tried to open her eyes, heavy with both sickness and desire. “Even though he spoke about it complainingly, it was interesting to see how attracted he was, too, by your fear of abandonment.” I went on talking,
gradually
lowering my body onto the big double bed to bring my head closer to her and slowly slide it down between her thighs, to be engulfed by the source of warmth itself. She was surprised to hear that Lazar had spoken about her so intimately to a stranger, even before the beginning of our trip. But now she understood
too why sometimes at train stations I had tried to help him by staying with her in his place, not understanding that for her there was no difference between “being left alone” and “being left without him.”

“So what’s going to happen now?” I asked, carefully and gently moving my lips down her body. Her head froze on the pillow and she did not reply. “Has it always been this way?” I raised my head for her response, and beyond the white hill of her belly she nodded in confirmation, her eyes closed, swooning in the intensity of her passion and the heat of her fever. I advanced my lips to the glowing coal of her vulva, and with the last
vestiges
of her strength she began to move on my tongue, moaning with pleasure, but also pleading for mercy and warning me that I was going to be infected with her germs.

Before her illness could interfere with our lovemaking, over which the threat of my failure in London was still hovering, I hurried to get up and switch off the light, leaving only the little reading light on, and with the practiced speed acquired in the changing room next to the operating room, I took off my clothes and gently but firmly undressed her too, while continuing to shower her with the words of love and affection she desperately and stubbornly demanded, so that I could penetrate the core of her dread and calm the terror of her loneliness. And only
afterward
did the doctor and the lover join together in one man, who not only hastened to cover her with two big blankets but also turned his attention to her dry, barking cough. “Now I’m going to be your doctor too,” I assured her, thankful that the illness had not been the pretext for her call. She lay curled up in the fetal position, limp and exhausted. I got dressed quickly and went downstairs to fetch my bag. I took the key from the door and put it in my pocket so she would not have to get out of bed to let me in. In spite of how late it was, the boulevard was full of gray-haired, elegantly dressed couples, evidently subscribers to the Philharmonic, whose concert must have lasted longer than usual. I hurried to the pay phone on the corner, behind which I used to hide to spy on the Lazars’ comings and goings. Who would have guessed then that a night would come when the key to their apartment would be stowed in my pocket and she would be lying in their double bed alone, sick and helpless, waiting for me to come and help her as if we were an old married couple? I
pushed the phone card into the slot and waited for the number of units I had left to be displayed. Did I really have to call Michaela now? I asked myself, and if I did, what should I say to her? If she were given to worrying about my lateness, I could have reassured her with a few words. But Michaela felt very secure in the world; she was not in the least prone to anxiety or panic, about me or anyone else, and she was always surprised when she heard that anyone had succumbed to an attack of anxiety about her. I knew that when she picked up the phone she would not ask where I had disappeared to or when I was coming home. She was far more likely to ask if I had already turned into a Brahmin.

The little green screen on the telephone showed that I had three units left on my card, plenty for a conversation with my parents in Jerusalem, whom I had forgotten to phone earlier in my
excitement
. But my mother, whom I got out of bed, was very
surprised
to get my call, since only half an hour before she had spoken at length to Michaela, who told her about Shivi’s exploits of the day, and mentioned that I had been called out to treat the sick Mrs. Lazar. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I haven’t been home yet,” I explained. “So where are you phoning from now? Are you still there?” she questioned me anxiously. “No,” I hastened to reassure her, careful at the same time not to tell a lie. “I’m
speaking
from a pay phone in the street. I simply remembered that I forgot to phone you today as I promised.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” said my mother, even though she was evidently touched by my concern. “When we speak to Michaela it’s the same as if we spoke to you. But how come you’re only through there now? What’s the matter with her? Is it really something serious, or just a false alarm?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said, scrupulously avoiding a lie. “She has a high temperature but no other symptoms. It looks like a viral infection. I hope the Indian hepatitis hasn’t returned through the back door,” and I laughed a strange, brief laugh, surprised to see that despite how late it was the screen already showed two units less, leaving me only one unit to call Michaela. “But why did she call you?” my mother said with some
annoyance
. “Where are all their friends?”

“I don’t know, Mother.” I tried to cut the conversation short. “She asked me to go, so I went. What could I do? Refuse? Look, I’m in a hurry. We’ll talk tomorrow. Good night.” But when I inserted the card into the slot to call Michaela and give her, in the metaphor she favored, the first flicker of the flame that would soon burn our house down, the last unit had vanished into thin air. If only the white-haired symphony-goers had still been
strolling
down the street, I would have shamelessly approached one of them and offered to buy his telephone card at its full price, never mind how many calls were left on it. But the boulevard was already deserted except for one young man, who could only offer me a telephone token, which was useless on this phone.

Suddenly I felt a strong temptation not to go back to her, not even to return the key, but to leave it in the mailbox and
disappear
, in order to stop my impossible fantasy from turning into a real love affair, full of suffering and disappointment. Could a woman like her really love me? I asked myself despairingly. Would she really want to take me in? And what would her
children
say? Her mother? Hishin? What would my parents say? And what kind of love could she give me, a woman who had a little girl inside her, abandoned by her parents in a dark empty house, running in the street to look for a little friend to come and spend the night with her? It was only because I had fallen in love with her that she was clinging to me like this. Perhaps I should warn Michaela that something bad was going to happen in the story in which Lazar’s sudden death was only the beginning. But when I went to the car and opened the door, I felt again a vague stirring inside me, which was not only the result of my weariness after a long day’s work but also the longing of a lonely, tired soul who wanted to go home, now that the key was within his grasp. I took the little medical bag my parents had bought me for my graduation from medical school out of the trunk and went
upstairs
, and while I pressed the bell lightly with one finger—to warn her of my arrival with the shrill, birdlike whistle—my other hand opened the door with the key, and I asked myself if it would be worth waking her up if she had already fallen asleep.

But there was no need to wake her. In spite of her exhaustion she could not settle down, and she had gone to take a shower, after which she had changed Lazar’s old sweater for the black velvet jumpsuit, put on white socks to warm her feet, and stuck
bits of cotton wool in her ears, and thus attired she sat down on the sofa in the living room to smoke a cigarette, sunk in her fear of abandonment as if it were the fear of death itself. When she saw me come in she flashed me her old involuntary smile,
watching
silently as I put my bag down on the low glass table, where a map of India had been spread the first time I met her. But then the smile faded and she asked me sadly, “How long does it take you to take a bag out of your car?” I didn’t reply but only smiled, pleased but also agitated by the thought that she was already becoming dependent on me. And in order not to sweep away all the boundaries between us, I asked her if Michaela had phoned to ask for me. “Here?” she asked in surprise. “Does she know that you’re here?”

“Of course,” I answered immediately, and by the decisive tone of my voice I wanted to let her know that now that Lazar had died, there would be no more need to lie to anybody in the world. She seemed somewhat confused by this reply, and looked silently at the medical instruments I removed from the bag, most of which were still new and gleaming, since I had no private patients so far and I used the clinic’s equipment when I paid house calls during my night shifts at the Magen-David-Adom station. I took a chair and drew it up to the sofa, and with a quick, light movement I whipped the cigarette from her fingers, something which even Lazar had not dared to do. I put it out in the ashtray, said firmly, “You shouldn’t do that,” and took her wrist to feel her pulse, which was rapid but not as rapid as I had expected, as if her temperature had gone down a little during my absence.

Her blood pressure was normal, even low for her age, the
diastolic
less than eighty, and her heartbeat, which was rapid
because
of the fever, sounded soft and clear. In the narrow beam of light from the otoscope I looked into her throat and ears. There were no obvious signs of infection, only a redness due to
excessive
dryness. “You must have something hot to drink,” I said. But it turned out that her electric kettle had broken down a few hours before. I interrupted my examination to go into the kitchen and see what was wrong. Standing among unwashed cups and glasses on the gray marble counter was the electric kettle, which had nothing wrong with it apart from the fact that the plug had
come loose from the socket. I showed her the source of the
problem
. “Is that all?” She smiled incredulously. “I don’t believe it.”

“That’s all,” I said firmly. “How come you didn’t see it for yourself?” But she was apparently incapable of seeing anything. Miss Kolby had already told me how she shrank from electrical appliances as if they were capable of harming her. But now, when the red light on the kettle went on and she was convinced of the insignificance of the “breakdown,” she decided to trust me and showed me the toaster, which had also stopped working a few days ago, hoping that here the problem would prove equally easy to fix. In fact one of the screws had come loose, and with the aid of a kitchen knife I soon returned the red glow to the coils. And then, for no apparent reason, while the electric kettle began to whistle in the silence of the night, tears suddenly welled in her eyes, as if only now she realized the depths of the new abyss of dependency into which she had been cast by her
husband
, who had abandoned her for the world of the dead. I stood still and didn’t make a move toward her. The sorrow and the pity in my heart prevented me from touching her, and she
returned
slowly to the living room and sat down in an armchair to finish her sad, soft weeping for the catastrophe that had suddenly become concrete. In the kitchen I poured two cups of tea and added a few cookies which I found in one of the drawers. I found the sugar bowl, and cut a few slices from an old melon I found in the refrigerator. I went into the living room and put the tray down on the glass table next to my stethoscope. Was she really a woman who would have to be taken care of all the time? I thought in a sweet panic, remembering how Lazar had danced attendance on her in India, and how naturally she had accepted his services, as she now accepted mine, nodding her head in thanks and picking up a teacup and beginning to sip the hot lemony brew gratefully, until I asked myself if this was already the dependency I hoped for, which would make it impossible for her to send me away.