“Not you,” I replied quietly but vehemently. “Certainly not you. The only person who depends on me is Shivi, and she’s got Michaela, who’ll always take care of her because she sees her as part of herself.”
My father’s footsteps were now heard, and judging by the speed with which the front door opened and the way he called my mother’s name, I guessed that he had come back cheerful and content, if not with the ceremony at the synagogue, at least with his own good deed, and perhaps also at not having lost his way. His face was blotched with red, a sure sign that he had been drinking wine. “You came back so soon?” said my mother, getting up quickly and going to meet him in the hallway, to prevent him from coming into the kitchen, presumably to give me time to recover and wipe the glum expression from my face. “Why soon?” said my father in an offended tone, as if he had forgotten his worries during the morning’s little adventure. “I left the house at seven o’clock this morning, and how long can they drag out their prayers?” It turned out that he had found his way without too much difficulty, and since he was the only one of the office staff to put in an appearance, he was greeted with respect and enthusiasm and also given the honor of reading from the Torah. “It was important for me to go,” he affirmed, if not to us then at least to himself, and he took off his hat and entered the kitchen. When he noticed the primeval wounded eye, which had shriveled a little in the pan, he said, “Is that for me?”
“Yes,” said my mother, “if you want it. Benjy didn’t feel like eating this morning.” He sat down immediately and ate my breakfast with relish, even though he had had refreshments at the synagogue too. He realized from our silence that something important had been said between us during his absence, but he was too full of his own experiences to try to find out what it was, and I soon left to wander around the neighborhood until lunch and breathe the dry, cold air of the radiant Sabbath morning. Strange how rarely I had set out on foot in recent years, I thought, and a sweet melancholy descended on me with the memory of the rainy evening when I had walked across Tel Aviv holding a big black umbrella over my head. But how different the Jerusalem streets were from the straight, open streets of Tel Aviv. Where could you find in the whole of Tel Aviv a steep narrow lane like this, running along the wall of the Lepers’ Hospital and suddenly opening out into the plaza fronting the Jerusalem Theater? What a pity that I couldn’t test the true power of the new motorcycle on an incline like this, I thought regretfully, as if I were about to leave the place forever. And thus, with a feeling of parting, perhaps genuine, perhaps imaginary, I continued along the street of the foreign consulates, which I had taken every day to school, examining the familiar facades of the houses and stopping to read the signs on the gates. Among them were many brass plates with the names of physicians, mentioning degrees and specializations, and I was surprised to see how many of them I still remembered from my schooldays, such as the big old sign bearing the name of the famous cardiologist Professor Ziegfried Adler, and next to it a small new one, PROFESSOR AVRAHAM ADLER, CARDIAC SURGEON. So this is where Bouma lives, I said to myself, the master-surgeon who came down from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to kill the administrative director and send his soul flying into mine in order to ruin my love affair. And all the arguments Bouma had piled on top of each other hadn’t torn off the veil of mystery surrounding that death.
I felt an urge to go inside and see the house. After all, I had promised Professor Adler to drop in to see him when I was in Jerusalem, so we could continue our discussion about Lazar’s sudden cardiac fibrillation. He seemed like a serious doctor who was interested in hearing the questions and observations of a younger colleague. It was almost noon. Even the laziest people were already up, and the most industrious could afford an hour of idleness at this time of day on a Saturday. Was it possible that the son, the successful professor, stayed in the same old apartment as his father? I wondered when I saw that there was only one entrance to the house, with an old sign simply saying ADLER, without any first names on the door. I was sure it couldn’t be where my Adler lived. But since the music pouring out of the house had a welcoming sound, I knocked on the door, and a sprightly old German Jew in a sporty sweater opened it. I explained not only who I was and who I was looking for, but also why. It turned out that Adler Junior did not live here but in Ein Karem, near the hospital; only his clinic was here, next to his father’s clinic and residence. In the meantime Professor Adler’s mother came out too, a stout, confident German who had bequeathed her plumpness to her son. What a pity, exclaimed both Adlers, who seemed very suited to each other; they would have phoned their son at home to ask if he could see me, but he had flown to a conference in England yesterday and would only be returning in a few days’ time. “A pity,” repeated the pleasant old man, the well-known cardiologist. “I’m sure he would have wanted to talk to you, Dr. Rubin, about Mr. Lazar’s operation, which we were all very sorry about. I know who you are; he mentioned the fact that you were present at the operation and that you thought of the ventricular tachycardia. He spoke to me a lot about that operation, and although it wasn’t his fault, he was left with an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. True, it isn’t exactly his specialization, it’s more my specialization, but he wants to go into the subject more deeply, in order not to be taken by surprise …” He laid his gnarled old hand on his sweater in the area of the heart, as if he felt a pain there. “I know,” I interrupted him, “Koch’s triangle.” The old man’s face lit up, and his brown eyes, full of humanity, gave me a warm look of acknowledgment. “Yes, Koch’s triangle,” he repeated happily and in an intimate tone, as if he had been personally acquainted with the learned Koch, who had identified the tiny invisible command post of the heart. He invited me in. But the conversation with Professor Adler Senior, which continued for a whole hour in his big study, where the somber library consisted mainly of history and literature rather than medical books, did not help to solve the mystery of Lazar’s death but only increased it. During the course of the conversation I discovered that this famous cardiologist, who had been one of the great names of Hadassah Hospital in his day, was not really interested in the cause of Lazar’s death, having never met the man. His only aim was to protect the reputation of his son, and with this in mind he began to tell me about all kinds of cases of sudden ventricular fibrillations that he had come across in the course of his long career and tried to connect them to Lazar. His wife, who sat next to us and listened attentively to our conversation, interrupted from time to time to mention patients of her husband’s whom she recalled. Although it was very pleasant to sit there between the two kindly old people, protected from the bright midday light outside, and to impress them with both my knowledge and understanding and with my interest and questions, I could not keep my parents from their lunch any longer.