Yes, the earth has suddenly begun to move, he admits with a shy smile shining in his black eyes, now clearly visible behind the polished lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses. But the mystery of its movement, he continues, is no different from the mystery of its stillness. Is there really any need to travel to all the fascinating and seductive places whose pictures are hanging on your walls, he asks, when if we only rise a little above time, trying to sweep us along like a strong river in its current, where we want to go will come to us wherever we are, thanks to the revolutions of the earth itself. If you don’t believe me, please be so good as to ask the bird tapping on your windowpane.
Is a new sense of humor budding here to replace the one that was withered? wonder the travel agents, whose computers stopped working as soon as he entered the office. If so, maybe there is hope that an unconscious too can be implanted, to replacethe one that was amputated.
It was only when my head was already heavy with sleep on the pillow, while the calm breathing of Michaela — who had no objection to sleeping in the same bed next to me — murmured in my ears as I tried to close my eyes and mobilize the darkness inside me to overcome the splinters of light constantly coming into the house from the outside world, that I realized I had made a mistake. I should never have agreed, certainly not on oath, to my mother’s request not to say anything to my father, for in this way I indirectly admitted that there was something perverse about my love, which was apt to upset my father so much that the whole thing had to be hidden from him in order to spare his feelings. How else was I to understand my mother’s request? My parents had always been scrupulously open and aboveboard with each other, especially in everything concerning me, not necessarily because the bond between them was particularly strong but out of fairness and loyalty, which were the guiding principles of their lives — and now my mother was suddenly breaking the rules and betraying my father. Did she think that she would be able to convince me to give up Dori without his help? Or maybe the opposite — was she afraid that in the battle that had already begun between us, he might cross the lines and become my ally? In the feverish confusion of my thoughts I could not come to any clear conclusion about what my mother might do or how she might react, but I was sure that tonight she wouldn’t sleep a wink, and she might not even go to bed. I felt sorry to think of her suffering alone, awake in the night. If I were really a good, sensitive son, not only in the superficial manner in which I fulfilled my obligations, I would call her and tried to comfort her and reassure her, or at least give her an opportunity to express her anger, in words or silence. But since I knew that my father might pick up the phone instead of my mother, or during the course of our conversation, I did nothing. If she had decided to engage me in single-handed combat, she would have to do so without the solidarity of their marriage.
From that moment on, this principle ruled the relations between my mother and me. I was silent, and any initiative for further clarification was in her hands, just as the initiative for setting the date for the journey to India was in Michaela’s hands, and the only initiative left to me was in the pursuit of my relationship with Dori. But while my mother and I seemed to have been struck by a slight paralysis, Michaela continued her preparations energetically and efficiently, until the trip to India was drawn tight as a bow and all that had to be done to deliver the arrow was touch the string. Deliver in the sense of redeem, for Michaela’s devotion to the dream of the return to India was so great that it gave her journey a spiritual, almost religious status. Not redemption from me, of course, but from the materialistic and achievement-oriented reality around us, which Michaela was not yet resigned to spending the rest of her life in. And her joy was intensified by the fact that she was enabling others to benefit from the journey too. Not only Stephanie, who was calling us almost every day from London, but even Shivi, whose tender mind Michaela believed would absorb impressions that would last for the rest of her life.
In order to prepare Shivi for the journey, Michaela painted a third eye on her forehead every morning, red, blue, or green, which made her look adorable and increased her excitement over their departure. I tried to spend as much time as possible with her, picking her up whenever she held out her little arms to me. Michaela often could not take her along when she went about the business of preparing for the trip, since the car had already been sold, half the proceeds going to the trip and the other half to buying a motorcycle for me, not as big and strong as my old one but quick and light enough to be effective on the flat, clogged roads of the city. When Stephanie arrived on a charter flight from London in the middle of a clear winter’s night, I saw no problem in taking the motorcycle to the airport to pick her up, for her luggage consisted only of a backpack, which even my modest little motorcycle could take with ease.
Indeed, there was a kind of lightness hovering over all the preparations for the trip. The date had been set, and since Michaela had chosen to fly from Cairo, which could be reached by a cheap bus ride, the tickets turned out to be exceptionally inexpensive, especially in view of the fact that Shivi was not yet one year old and was thus entitled to fly for free. This was Michaela’s reason for refusing my mother’s request to postpone the flight until after Shivi’s first birthday party, which might have consoled them a little for the separation from their granddaughter, the bulletin of whose doings was the high point of their day. Although they relied, as I did, on Michaela’s resourcefulness and experience and her grasp of the mysteries of the Indian mentality, the fact that the trip was open-ended naturally caused them profound anxiety, which Michaela tried to assuage to the best of her ability, not only because she was fond of them but also because she had learned to respect and appreciate them when they had visited us in London. Accordingly, she found the time to take Shivi to Jerusalem and spend a day with my parents to say good-bye and set their minds at rest with a detailed and practical discussion of the solutions to all kinds of problems that might crop up. In order to reassure them even further, she took Stephanie with her, to remind them of the solid common sense of her friend from London, who would act as both her traveling companion and a substitute mother for Shivi if, God forbid, something happened to Michaela, or if she simply felt like taking off for a couple of days to places unsuitable for small children.
As I could have predicted, my mother succeeded in persuading Stephanie to accompany my father and Shivi on a walk in the park so that she could remain alone with Michaela and tactfully try to find out what had really happened between us and whether there was any substance to my declaration of love for the “older woman,” whose name my mother still refrained from mentioning, even though she knew very well who she was. Michaela’s replies to her questions astounded her, not only because they were frank and explicit, for which she may have been prepared, but because they were given in terms of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, as if the trip to India had already begun and Michaela were sitting with her friend on the banks of the Ganges, not in a Jerusalem neighborhood opposite a woman whose mind was as uncompromisingly clear as the Israeli light coming through the windows. My mother had grown used to Michaela’s rather obscure and esoteric manner of analyzing human situations in London, and as long as it concerned other people, usually unknown to her, she could react with tolerance, but now they were talking about me, her only child, and my marriage, which was in danger of breaking up completely. But my mother understood that the infidelity was only a pretext for Michaela to realize her dream of going back to India, a dream that had been hovering over our marriage from the first day. In the middle of the conversation she therefore changed her tactics, suggesting to Michaela that her trip with Shivi was not something that must necessarily deepen the rift in our marriage but rather something that could open the way to a future reconciliation. Michaela agreed immediately, perhaps because she suddenly pitied this stoic woman who was longing for reconciliation and suffering torments of guilt over my behavior. And in order to gain my mother’s support for her trip, she explained how her and Shivi’s absence for the next few months could help me to extricate myself from a situation that would probably lead to suffering and misery. She believed that my feelings, if only for Shivi, would take me to India too, where it would be possible to strengthen me, precisely because reincarnation and rebirth were a natural part of daily existence there. “The two of you are welcome to come with him,” added Michaela in complete seriousness. “We’ll be happy to have you.” And her great light eyes were radiant with generous hospitality, as if the expanses of India were rooms in her private home. “It would be really wonderful to meet there, as we said we would in London.”