Michaela listened quietly and patiently, apparently sensing that if I felt it was so important to repeat Hishin’s eulogy to her even before she reached home after being away for a year, something more personal, touching on me and her, was bound to come. And indeed, the real excitement came only after Hishin abandoned the tone of general praise for the “ideal man” and began talking in a tender, intimate tone about Lazar’s reactions to his trip to India two years before, in order to illuminate a different, hidden aspect of the soul of the efficient administrator who had left us for another world. The many mourners, standing scattered among the white headstones in the afternoon light of an autumn that was already anticipating the first winter rains, began quietly coming closer in order to hear Lazar’s impressions and thoughts about India, as quoted by Professor Hishin — not only to my own astonishment, but also, as I sensed immediately, to that of Dori, who wiped her tears and looked questioningly at the speaker. Even though Lazar had been shocked and horrified by what he had seen on the dusty streets of India, said Hishin, and especially indignant at the sight of the sick and maimed lying abandoned in their poverty and filth, he had not avoided honestly facing the question of whether the great gap between our own world and theirs granted us a spiritual advantage too. Could we claim with any degree of confidence that our happiness was any greater and more real than theirs? “And perhaps,” Hishin went on to ask on behalf of Lazar, who could not rise from his grave to deny the strange thoughts attributed to him, “perhaps it is just the contempt and indifference shown by the people of the world whom we call ‘backward’ and ‘undeveloped’ for both details and limits — perhaps it is just they who can give us a truer sense of the universe through which we pass so quickly, and help to assuage the longings we all feel for immortality, especially at painful moments of parting like this, when we bury those dear to us.” Then, looking around at the faces of the mourners listening to him attentively, Hishin straightened the black baseball cap on his head and went on to speak of the night Lazar had spent with a retired Indian clerk in the little compartment of a train traveling from New Delhi to Varanasi, and of Lazar’s amazement at this Indian clerk’s calm confidence in his ability to ensure his rebirth by dint of a correct immersion in the waters of the Ganges. It was strange to hear Hishin talking about that night in the train as if Lazar had been all alone in the compartment, but then I remembered that Hishin was right and Lazar had been alone that night, sitting awake in the dark and looking at the three people sleeping next to him. And Hishin continued in a voice full of pain, as his eyes came to rest for a moment on me, “Can we deny that we too, people as completely modern as we are, sometimes dream of being born again, especially as we stand before a freshly filled grave? But how can we console ourselves with the idea of rebirth when it becomes clearer from day to day that there is nothing to be born again? For there is no such thing as a soul and never has been.” Now a murmur of protest passed through the crowd, but Hishin continued undeterred. He himself, he announced, had spent his whole life prying into the most secret corners of the human body, and he had not yet come across any traces of a soul; and his brain-surgeon friends argued that everything they found and touched was pure matter, without a hint of the existence of any informing spirit, until they were as convinced as he was that one day it would be possible to reconstruct the whole thing artificially, and certainly to transplant parts of the brain. Just as today we implanted artificial devices and donor organs in the body, the day would come when it would be possible to implant or inject into the brain devices or substances that would expand our memories, sharpen our intelligence, or intensify our pleasure. “And so,” Hishin concluded with a surprising turn, “I can’t console myself with the immortality of Lazar’s soul, from which I could ask forgiveness, but only with the memory of what I received from the flesh-and-blood man himself and what I gave him. And if, indeed, a mistake was made, it was only because of my great love for him.”
A faint, ironic smile crossed Michaela’s lips. It was impossible to tell whether it was occasioned by Hishin’s words themselves or by my efforts to quote him word for word. “So that’s how he thinks he’ll get out of it,” she said softly, without explaining what she meant, and her great eyes tried again to meet mine, which had been avoiding her ever since I met her at the airport and which were now scanning the familiar streets around our apartment, looking for a parking place. In the apartment too, where I had not yet rearranged the furniture moved by Amnon, Michaela went on trying to meet my eyes, to make me repeat the dramatic announcement I had made in my excitement when I had called her from Lazar’s office a few hours after his death, an announcement that was so important that without a second thought she had cut her stay short, canceled her trip to the Isle of Skye, and returned home. But I went on avoiding her eyes, and she put Shivi down in the little playpen my parents had bought her the week before and followed me into the kitchen, where I was standing in front of the sink, and put her arms around me and kissed me, not only with the lust aroused in her by every change in location — and the apartment could be considered a new locale after a year’s absence — but also in order to let me know that the bizarre and mysterious message I had conveyed to her that night was both credible and attractive to her. A new warmth and sweetness began streaming into me from Michaela’s strong arms clasping me to her body and from the long tongue licking my face. And the desire that I had forgotten in the anger of our parting and in the drama and distress of Lazar’s illness and death surged up in me with such force that I almost choked in my enthusiasm as I tried to swallow her tongue and to cover her eyes with kisses, if only to hide the penetrating look she still beseeched me with in order to hear again the wild confession which had compelled her to hurry back to Israel. I picked her up in my arms, and while Shivi raised her head to follow our movements, I carried her into the other room, which because of Amnon’s love for the sea had turned from the grandmother’s bedroom into the living room. I laid her on the narrow couch, and without stopping to open it up and double its size, I took off her clothes and knelt down to caress and kiss her private parts, trying to find some sign of her unfaithfulness to me in England or Scotland. But I found no such sign, and I stood up and lay down next to her and made love to her at length, pleasurably and generously, as on that night in the desert, overlooking Eyal’s wedding. And we only stopped when Shivi’s whimpering turned into a demanding cry.