Did she really know about my love for her mother? And did this love, I asked myself, with not a little pain, seem to her so alarming, so outrageous and repulsive, that she couldn’t even stand for a moment next to the man who had gone to the ends of the earth to rescue her and whom she had trusted far more than her parents to save her life? Even if she thought that this love deprived her of her due, she could still have respected its mystery, which had begun in the hotel in Varanasi when I took blood from her mother to revive her. These reflections continued to trouble my thoughts on my way home and added distress to the sorrow of returning to the apartment, which in spite of Michaela’s efforts to leave it neat and tidy was still full of traces of the baby, the memory of whose sweet face brought tears to my eyes. And although my parents had told me not to hesitate to wake them up to tell them about the parting, I refused to burden my already sorrow-filled heart with the anger and disappointment of my mother, who knew that I had agreed so casually to their going so I could devote myself entirely to the insanity of the love I had so perversely chosen. I therefore not only refrained from calling Jerusalem but disconnected the phone, darkened the apartment, and got into bed hoping not only to sleep but to lose consciousness completely.
But my sleep, which did indeed begin with a full loss of consciousness, was soon violently interrupted by something like an electric shock passing through it. As if by someone’s hand on an invisible switch, it not only was interrupted but disintegrated completely, and from its ruins something seemed to fly up and disappear. And in spite of my soul, which was feverish with exhaustion, and my body, which was sinking heavily and limply into the bed, my conscious mind had taken control of me again and knew that there was no more hope of sleep. However tightly I closed my eyes, I found no consolation in the darkness, only a bus with little red lights, racing now, after crossing the border, on a desert road not far from the sea in the silvery moonlight, with Shivi sleeping on Michaela’s lap and Michaela probably sleeping now too, perhaps leaning on the shoulder of her friend Stephanie, who was chatting with one of the young backpackers. And for the first time I felt a pang of the anxiety of abandonment squeezing my soul, as if I were not looking at the lights of the bus which held my wife and daughter receding into the distance not from the breadth of this double bed but from the opening of a little pup tent, alone and abandoned in a desolate wilderness. Suddenly I was exposed to the incomprehensible indifference of the universe, and I had to switch on the reading light, although it did not restore my composure. Instead, it only increased the pain of my envy for all those who are able to sleep, connected to each other by their bodies or their dreams. It was then that I thought, I have not been liberated but abandoned. And even the soft sound of the rain falling outside could not soften the new dread of loneliness stealing into the walls of the house. I felt as if the blood coursing through my veins were not enough to sustain me. When I shifted restlessly underneath the quilt and threatened myself with getting out of bed in the hope that my weariness would overcome me and return my lost sleep, the bed itself seemed to cast me out, as if my touch on the pillows and bedclothes were a burden to it. And a little like a sleepwalker I emerged from the circle of light in the bedroom into the darkness of the living room, trying to attach myself to a less alienating version of reality, the one contained in the shabby floral upholstery of the sofa, which immediately aroused my longing for the plump, laughing woman who sat on it with her legs crossed, frozen in alarm but also in delight at the young man’s declaration of love. But was such a longing, which might warm the heart with a sweet sorrow, enough to make me take off my pajamas and with limp heavy movements put on layer after layer of clothes? No. Something more real and powerful forced me to switch off the lights and go out into the rainy night with my helmet in my hand, in order to seek human contact. As if now that Lazar’s soul had left me, my abandonment had doubled.
If it had been even six o’clock in the morning I might have called my parents and avoided this weird nocturnal expedition. However, I could not have unburdened myself to my mother in my father’s presence or spoken of everything weighing on my heart — the parting from Michaela and Shivi, our plans for the future — though sharing these feelings would have eased my sudden sense of abandonment. But it was three o’clock in the morning, and since I never had had time to become acquainted with the Tel Aviv pub scene, let alone with the all-night discos, I could not seek human contact at this hour with anyone but those who were always prepared to give it — in other words, those at the hospital, where I knew that even at this still, secret hour, absolute and eternal vigilance held sway over even the remotest corner in the building, wrapping staff and patients alike in a blanket of security, whether they were tossing in their beds or asleep in their chairs or dead in their iron drawers. I knew that after getting over the surprise of my sudden arrival at the wrong time, one of the anesthetists in the emergency room might try to coax me into changing places with him, so I decided to go to one of the other parts of the hospital. It seemed much darker than usual. I asked one of the security guards about the darkness. He too was aware of the difference and concerned by it — if darkness reigned over the entire hospital, it meant that it wasn’t just a coincidence or an accident but the result of a new directive from administration to save electricity. And then it dawned on me, like a flash of lightning: they had found a successor to Lazar, and he must be someone from outside, if his first instruction was to dim the lights. I decided to go up to the pediatric ward, where there were always parents awake, sitting in vigil. But first I went down to my locker in the intensive care unit, to leave my helmet and leather jacket and put on the coat with my name embroidered on it and hang a stethoscope around my neck. Thus protected by the neutral identity of a doctor on night duty, I went up to the pediatric ward. As I had guessed it was humming with activity, not so much because of the concern of the parents, some of whom were sleeping in corners while others paced the corridors red-eyed with despair, but thanks to the wakefulness of those children whose as yet undiagnosed illnesses gave them the right to demand unremitting attention. I too wanted attention, but the parents who surrounded me did not see that I was no less exhausted than they were. Although I repeatedly explained that I was not a pediatrician but an anesthetist and I had only come up here to look for someone, they clung even to this passing medical authority and showered me with questions of a medical or bureaucratic nature, which I answered patiently but in a general, ambivalent, evasive, and noncommittal way, as if the source of authority which had always given strength and clarity to my responses and diagnoses were slipping away from me. It was not surprising that after a while even the most insistent of the parents turned away from me, and with my whole being crying out for the sleep that had been denied me, I walked down the corridor and peeped into the rooms full of bright posters and toys, to soften my burning eyes with the sight of the sleeping babies, some of whom were no older than Shivi, now lying in the warmth and safety of Michaela’s arms, or perhaps Stephanie’s lap. Even after I had gone downstairs, firmly resolved to go home, get into bed, and drown the inexplicable anxiety that had taken hold of me in sleep, I nevertheless made one last effort, going outside, still in my white coat and stethoscope, oblivious to the wind raging in the little stand of trees behind the main building, and into the annex that housed our small psychiatric department, which Lazar’s death had perhaps saved from extinction. Although I had never been there before, I knew very well that no concerned relatives would be wandering around its corridors. And even if they were, it was not them I was seeking but the doctor on duty, to ask his advice.