When my father and I finally finished chatting about the salaries of doctors and possible complications in surgery, my mother held out a white envelope with my name written on it, which contained an invitation to Eyal’s wedding, which was to take place in three weeks’ time in Kibbutz Ein Zohar in the Arava. My parents had received a separate invitation, and Eyal himself had called to urge them to come. His mother had joined in the request, and even Hadas had taken the receiver and added a few friendly words. It seemed that it was important to them for my parents, who had known Eyal since he was a child, to be at the wedding. “You’re not thinking of traveling all the way to the Arava?” I asked in surprise, but it turned out that they had already promised Eyal they would go, and that they intended to drive down in their own car, for after the wedding they intended to continue on to one of the spa hotels on the banks of the Dead Sea and spend a few days there. Their disappointment at the cancellation of the visit to Tel Aviv had apparently only intensified their hunger for travel, for instead of waiting to consult me about their plans, as they usually did, they had arranged it all themselves, and even reserved rooms in a hotel. “What will you do at a wedding for young people on a kibbutz?” I asked with a faint smile. “Why on earth should you travel all the way there, and in the old car on top of everything?” But my mother was determined to go. Eyal had asked them to be present at his wedding, and they didn’t want to hurt his feelings. They remembered him hanging around in our house, and there had been times, especially after his father committed suicide, when they had considered him almost a second son. And besides, they had every intention of enjoying the wedding, the trip to the desert, the kibbutz. I would join them in Jerusalem, or they would come and pick me up in Tel Aviv, and we would drive down together to the Arava, and after the kibbutz we would all go to the hotel on the banks of the Dead Sea. They had already booked a room for me, and really, why shouldn’t I take a few days’ vacation? But I didn’t want to meet my old friends with my parents hovering at my elbow, and I immediately rejected their invitation to join them at the Dead Sea, even for one night. I did my best to discourage the whole idea, and told them that they would have to reach the Arava under their own steam, because I intended to ride down on my motorcycle in order to be free to return to Tel Aviv without having to depend on anyone else. “But you have no commitments to the hospital anymore,” my mother said, offended by my refusal to accompany them on their holiday. “I have other commitments,” I said, without explaining. They were very disappointed by my negative reaction to their plans, especially my mother, who was not enthusiastic about traveling alone on the desert roads and was afraid that my father would get lost, since he had a habit of misreading road maps and was too proud to stop and ask for directions. But when I saw that all the obstacles I put in their way would not deter them from keeping their promise to Eyal, I softened a little and promised to meet them at the exit from Beersheba and ride in front of them to the kibbutz, and also to guide them to their hotel later that night. At this my mother relaxed, and we passed a pleasant Shabbat together. I described the complicated brain surgery again at length, and told them about the new feelings I had experienced as an anesthetist. I also reminisced about India, and this time I was more generous with my stories about Calcutta and the ghats of Varanasi, but I hardly mentioned the Lazars. I didn’t say anything about the guarantee either, and it was only on Saturday afternoon, before I set out for Tel Aviv, while my mother was taking a nap, that I got my father to sign it, quickly adding my mother’s signature myself.
I pocketed the signed guarantee with the feeling that I had succeeded in lassoing Dori from a distance with one more slender thread. But how absurd, I thought in despair, that after my daring confession, and after I had succeeded in going to bed with her, I should still feel as if I were standing at the starting point, needing some unimportant piece of paper as an excuse for meeting her. I knew that if I called her on the phone I would give her an opening to evade me, even if she wasn’t yet sure herself of what she really wanted. If it was true that this was the first time she had been unfaithful to her husband — and I knew just how deeply she was attached to him — she must surely be full of remorse and self-reproach at what she had done, even if she was a little bit in love with me or felt at least some longing for what had happened between us. Accordingly, I must on no account give her the chance to break off the connection between us before we met again, a meeting I decided to effect by the simple means of walking confidently into her office, like an old client who didn’t need an appointment to be granted an interview, however brief. And even though I suspected that she might be startled to see me, I was sure that she would soon realize that my only motive in surprising her in her office was to show her that she could trust me completely, just as I had taken off all my clothes and placed myself at her disposal, giving her the choice to do whatever she wanted with me. Yes, I would meet her on her own territory, where she was protected from any improper gesture or word that might escape me, but I was doing it not just to calm any fears of harassment but also in order to show her that my intentions were not only sexual but deeper than that, as if the guarantee I had come to give her was also a testimony to her tenant’s good character. Perhaps precisely because of the significance I attached to my sudden entry into her office, I put it off, even though I had plenty of time on my hands now to haunt the little streets around her building, or to watch her strenuous maneuvers to get in or out of a forbidden parking place — I still delayed my entry, still hesitated to insert myself between one client and the next, to hand over the guarantee and relinquish the sweet thread of hope I held in my hand. Until one day when she appeared in a dream I had in the middle of the day, for now that my time was my own I had gotten into the habit of taking long, deep naps in the afternoon. In my dream she was standing and talking in her friendly, affectionate way to Hishin, who was lying, apparently as a joke, on one of the beds in the ward. And this simple dream for some reason agitated me so much that the same day, late in the afternoon, I bought a brightly colored Indian silk scarf which I found in a little knickknack shop in Basle Street, and I walked straight into her office and asked the dark-haired secretary, who remembered me from the morning when we ran around organizing things for the trip, and greeted me warmly, to let me in to see her for a minute as soon as she was free. But as it happened she was already free, and I went in and shut the door behind me and sat down opposite her, without waiting for her permission, and with lowered eyes I handed her the guarantee with my parents’ signatures on it and said, “Here’s the guarantee you asked for.”