Open Heart (36 page)

Wearing a white dress, as if she were the bride, Eyal’s mother sat alone in the center of the lawn with a glass of pale yellow juice perched in front of her. Since the last time I had seen her she seemed to have grown even larger, despite the strict diet Eyal had imposed on her, as if she were swollen not with food but with anxiety at his imminent desertion. But I still remembered, even now, her beauty, which had filled me with admiration when I was a child, and her heavy white face, covered with makeup, still preserved its old radiance in my eyes. My parents, though, who had not met her for a few years, hardly recognized her, and when she stood up to hug and kiss them warmly, they were shocked and embarrassed by her appearance. In the meantime Hadas
appeared
, simply dressed, calm and full of gaiety, and introduced us to her parents, kibbutz members who had not yet changed out of their working clothes and were still busy making the final
arrangements
for the ceremony. “Eyali’s worried that nobody will come,” said Hadas with a merry laugh, “but they will, and some of them will surprise you too,” and then she disappeared from view. A young woman with big light eyes and curly hair came up to ask us if we wanted anything to drink. My parents wanted their afternoon tea and modestly asked for milk with it, if
possible
, and while I examined the girl’s face and tried to remember where I had seen it before, I asked for a glass of wine, a request applauded by my mother, who immediately exclaimed, “An
excellent
idea, we’ll join you as soon as we’ve had our tea.”

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I said to Eyal’s mother, keeping my eyes fixed on the young woman as she went to the bar, “but suddenly I feel excited for Eyal.”

“May your turn be next, Benjy.” She smiled at me lovingly. “You won’t escape.”

“No, he won’t escape,” my father promised her and pointed to two big birds gliding over the jagged red outline of the cliff, which had become sharper and clearer as the sun set. He asked the young woman, who had brought our drinks in the meantime,
“Could those be hawks?” But by the time she had placed the cups of tea and glass of wine before us and raised her eyes, the birds had disappeared into one of the many crevices whose black holes were distinctly outlined in the setting sun. And then, like a flash of lightning, I recognized her. “Aren’t you Michaela?” I exclaimed in surprise. She nodded her head. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to recognize me.”

“This is the girl,” I said, introducing her happily to my
parents
, “who was with Einat in Bodhgaya and brought the Lazars the news of her illness.” My parents nodded in acknowledgment, and Michaela smiled at them and as if to confirm my words she put her two slender hands together, raised them to her face, and bowed her head in a gesture of such grace and charm that a sweet pain pierced my heart. The vision of the Lazars’ large
living
room flickered inside me, sweeping after it a colorful whirl of scenes from India, among which hovered the warm, vivacious smile of the woman I loved. “How long were you in the Far East?” my father asked her. “Eight months,” replied Michaela. “So long?” exclaimed my mother. “That’s nothing,” said Michaela dismissively. “If I hadn’t run out of money, I would have stayed longer. I’m still eaten up with longing.” “What is it about the Far East that the young find so attractive?” my father wondered. She examined him closely, weighing up her answer. “Everyone’s attracted by something different. I was attracted by the different sense of time. I almost became a Buddhist.” She said this seriously, in a way that was impossible not to respect. The three of us were silent, and then she fixed her big light eyes on me, as if her explicit longing had identified my hidden ones, and in a tone of faint rebuke she added, “We were all really surprised that you came back so quickly.”

“All of you?” I was astonished by this sudden use of the
plural
. “Who’re all of you?”

“Nobody in particular,” she said, retreating, “just other friends who’re as crazy as I am about the Far East and who heard about your story.”

“My story?” I blushed, suddenly anxious. “What story? I don’t understand.” But now she appeared to hesitate, smiling faintly to herself and turning with my parents to look at the two buses that drew up at the entrance to the canyon, depositing in
the soft silence the many wedding guests Eyal had feared would not come.

Already someone was calling to Michaela to come and help with the new arrivals, and she apologized to us, again with that graceful, precise Indian gesture, and disappeared among the
people
spreading slowly over the lawn, bringing with them from the north the first signs of darkness. Later I learned that she too, like Hadas, was connected to the kibbutz without being a member of it. Even though her parents had left the kibbutz when she was little girl, she still came back sometimes to work as a hired
laborer
in seasonal jobs, or as a waitress and kitchen-worker at weddings and other functions. I was still disturbed by what she had said and tried at first to keep an eye on her movements, but my attention was soon claimed by forgotten friends from high school and medical school, and also by a couple of well-known professors from Hadassah Hospital, whom Eyal had succeeded in enticing to come to his wedding and on whom he was now dancing attention, to compensate for the rigors of the journey. Eyal seemed calmer, and the sly twinkle had returned to his eyes. He had agreed to holding the wedding on the kibbutz not only to save money but also because of his plans—unrealistic, in my opinion—to leave the hospital one day and come to live in the Arava, to practice a more “meaningful” kind of medicine and also to enjoy the peace and quiet of the place. And indeed, the wedding was unusually quiet. My parents, who were now
sipping
the wine Michaela had brought them with evident
enjoyment
, noticed this and remarked on it to me. There was none of the usual noisy music, only the soft strumming of the guitarist, who had already turned into a dark silhouette on the diving board. Nor were there any spoiled, greedy children running around and making a racket. Eyal’s mother had no family left and his father’s relations had cut off contact with her after her husband’s suicide, so most of the guests were members of the kibbutz or friends of the couple, young people, some of who were still single. The young doctors from Hadassah were on their best behavior under the scrutiny of their professors. The only child there, a boy from Jerusalem, sat quietly between his mother and father. He was Amnon’s thirteen-year-old retarded brother, and his parents, like mine, had been invited to the wedding
because
Eyal had spent a lot of time in their house after his father’s
death as well, and he was not the man to forget those who had been good to him in the past. Both my parents and Amnon’s seemed pleased to have been invited to this desert wedding and delighted at their meeting. After telling each other a little about themselves and reminiscing about the forgotten exploits of our childhood, my father tried to find out where Amnon stood in regard to his doctoral thesis, and to my astonishment I saw my mother, who was always careful not to touch my father in
public
, reach out and squeeze his thigh in the dark, for with her sharp intuition she had already sensed that Amnon’s Ph.D. was stuck far deeper than either he or his parents admitted, and she didn’t want to be the cause of any embarrassment.

My father took the hint and immediately cut short his
questions
, just as Michaela came up with a large tray and offered us warm pies that smelled of meat. It appeared that the protocol was to serve the main meal before the marriage, so that hunger would not prevent the guests from concentrating on the
ceremony
itself, which was taken seriously here, and conducted in an original style by two Reform rabbis, one male and one female, who came especially from the settlement of Yahel, near Eilat. I was eager to go on talking to Michaela, to retire with her to some remote corner in order to find out exactly what she had meant by referring to “my story.” Her passionate longing for India, which she had confessed to us, and her intention to return there as soon as she could, also made me want to refresh my own fading memories with her living ones. And without even finishing my pie, which was surprisingly tasty, I stood up and put my hand on her shoulder before she was swallowed up by the crowd of young kibbutzniks, Hadas’s friends, who had just turned up, clean and fresh from the shower after their day’s work. “Excuse me, Michaela,” I said, deliberately addressing her by name, “could I talk to you sometime this evening?” She blushed, as if my weak hold on her shoulder implied some intimacy of which I myself was not yet aware. “Talk? Why not?” she said. “But when?” I pressed her. “When will you be free?” She looked straight at me with her large eyes. “I’m free already,” she replied seriously, unsmiling. “Just let me take the tray back.” And she went to the buffet to return the tray. And the great relief I felt at her response suddenly gave rise, as I stood there surrounded by Eyal’s guests, forgotten childhood friends, to an idea that at first
seemed astonishing and reckless but was also thrilling and
compelling
. If I really had to get married in order to be considered less of a danger in the eyes of the woman I had fallen in love with, maybe a “Buddhist” girl like this one, gentle and flowing, who drifted free as a bird and full of spiritual longings from place to place, would be ideal for me.

She took off her little apron and hung it on the back of a chair, and said with a pleasant smile, “I’m all yours.”

“Then let’s find somewhere quieter,” I said, trying to hint that I wanted to talk to her about something special. She wasn’t
surprised
by my request, even though the lawn was far from noisy, with people standing and talking quietly, going up to the buffet from time to time to cut themselves additional slices of the
delicious
pies. At first she led me toward the kibbutz houses, but suddenly she stopped, as if she had thought of a better idea, and retraced her footsteps to the little canyon, where she turned
without
a word toward the dark side of the cliff, on a mountain path clearly visible between the chalky rocks, yellow in the light of the distant lamps. “Come,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “If you don’t mind climbing a little, we can sit quietly and look down on everybody at the same time, so that we can see when the
ceremony
begins.” She wasn’t beautiful in my eyes, but very
charming
and pleasant. Her slim body was too tall and bony for my taste, and her little face seemed too small for her huge eyes, which shone in the light of the rising moon like two blue lamps. I climbed up after her in silence, surprised by her sudden decision to take me up this rocky, winding mountain path which ascended sharply in the utterly deserted landscape where from time to time we heard the rustle of birds startled from their nests and the beating of wings. “Are Buddhists allowed to marry?” The idiotic question burst out accompanied by a light laugh. “They’re
allowed
everything,” she replied at once, not surprised by my
question
. “Buddhism isn’t another vicious religion looking for ways to oppress people and frighten them, but a means of alleviating inevitable suffering.” She spoke seriously, and the expression “inevitable suffering” came out of her mouth sincerely and
convincingly
, evoking a wave of affection and sympathy for her in my heart. “It’s a pity you couldn’t have stayed for a few more days at least in the temples of Bodhgaya,” she went on. “There you would have understood for yourself what I could never
succeed
in explaining to you.” And once more I heard in her words a rebuke at my failure to take proper advantage of my
unexpected
mission to India. “But how could I have stayed there?” I justified myself to her as if I were really to blame. “Mr. Lazar was in such a hurry to get back, and I couldn’t leave Einat, who was in bad shape.”

“Yes, she was in bad shape,” she agreed gently, “and if not for you she wouldn’t have made it back home.” The path now turned sharply back on itself, and suddenly we were standing as if suspended in the air above the glittering blue rectangle of the swimming pool surrounded by the wedding guests. We were
actually
quite close to them, but completely hidden and secluded, absorbed in the story Michaela had called mine but which was actually Einat’s, and which I had no need to draw out of her, for it flowed from her with the same simplicity and directness with which she spoke about everything, making me feel pleasantly calm and relaxed after months of inner conflict and tension.

She had met Einat with two other Israelis in the street in
Calcutta
, when Einat, still stunned by the sights, was at the
beginning
of her trip. Michaela, in contrast, was already an old India hand, after traveling extensively in central India and spending three months in Calcutta, where she had joined volunteer French and Swiss doctors offering free medical services at improvised sidewalk clinics. She had helped these “sidewalk doctors,” as they called themselves, in return for two meals a day and a place to sleep. This was how she had met Einat, on the sidewalk, when Einat came to ask for a dressing for a wound on her leg. Michaela had immediately sensed that Einat was in need of her help, that she was very frightened and upset by her encounter with Calcutta, and perhaps even regretted coming to India. But she also realized that Einat’s panic was something that she shared with all those who sensed that beyond the poverty and ugliness there was a spiritual power that could suck them in, especially those whose sense of identity was tenuous, who felt unable to achieve their ambitions, and who were always quick to look for a way of escape. And indeed, Einat soon persuaded her two friends to escape from Calcutta and go to Nepal in order to immerse themselves in the glorious scenery of the Himalayas. But after two weeks, to Michaela’s astonishment, Einat returned to
Calcutta
alone and came to look for her. That was how their
friendship
began. At first Einat worked with Michaela in the service of the “sidewalk doctors,” but she soon abandoned the work and joined some other young people who were traveling to Bodhgaya to take the course on Vipassana meditation, not because she was really interested in Buddhism but because she was one of those people who are more interested in escaping than in seeking. “And you?” I asked Michaela sharply. “Me?” She reflected for a while, trying to answer honestly. “I think that I’m actually more of a seeker than an escapist, but I may be wrong.”