Her eyes lit up in her usual smile, and she seemed quite calm, as if she had been expecting this sudden intrusion, and at that moment I didn’t know if she was calm because she was sure that what had happened between us was only a passing episode and it was all over now, or the opposite — she had become calm on seeing that I had not taken her words seriously and that I was bringing her the guarantee in person because I didn’t want to give her up. She took the guarantee and folded it as if she were about to tear it in half, but then hesitated and stopped herself, as if the lawyer in her were warning her of unpleasant eventualities in the future. But then she changed her mind again and tore it into shreds, which she dropped into the wastepaper basket, saying as she did so, “Never mind, I trust you.” Then she raised her laughing eyes to me and said, “So how are you? Have you recovered?” She blushed slightly, afraid perhaps of what I was about to say, and I said innocently, “From what?” and she said, “You know. From something that is quite impossible and will never happen again.” I kept quiet, afraid that my rising lust would cloud the wits I needed for this confrontation, but I looked straight at her. She was wearing a gray suit like the ones hanging in her mother’s closet. Her bun was beginning to come loose, and locks of hair had fallen onto her neck. The shade of her hair was darker than I remembered from the week before, and I wondered whether she had dyed it again or whether the light in the room was deceiving me. Her makeup, too, had faded during the day, exposing the cute freckles on her cheekbones. Her breasts looked smaller now, outlined separately under her white blouse. And behind the desk I caught a glimpse of the pampered little paunch. She certainly wasn’t beautiful, I thought to myself, and a vague memory of my afternoon dream crossed my mind. But she had a warmth and liveliness and directness that I badly needed now, and if she insisted on thinking that it was over between us, she had every right to do so, for I had not yet succeeded in convincing her that only the one who had started it had the right to end it. And then, in a gloomy silence, I took the gift-wrapped scarf out of my pocket and put it in front of her on the desk, whispering hoarsely, “I got this for you. Maybe because it reminds me of India. I don’t know.” She was now stunned and overcome with agitation, as if neither my declaration of love nor my standing naked before her had persuaded her of the seriousness of my intentions as much as this little scarf. She closed her eyes tight, and then she pressed her fist to her mouth again, as if she wanted to hit herself for what she had done to me and to herself. She unwrapped the colored paper and spread the scarf out in silence, and then she smiled distractedly and said, “Tell me, Benjy, what do you really want? I’ll soon be fifty. I don’t understand. What was it there in India that threw you off balance? What happened? True, I made a mistake too. I was flattered by the thought of being desired by such a young man. But that’s all. What can it lead to? It’s impossible. And you know it.”
“Yes, I know,” I admitted somberly, and I went on with miserable stubbornness, “but I’m only asking for one more time.”
“No,” she said immediately and vehemently, without thinking, “there’s no point. Even though it was very sweet for me too. It makes no difference. What will one more time give us? It will only make you want more, and you’ll come back and pester me again. And why not — you’re a free agent, you’ve got no obligations to anyone. You misled me when you asked to rent my mother’s apartment, I believed you when you said that you wanted to get married.”
“But I really do want to get married,” I replied quickly.
The secretary knocked at the door, and without waiting she opened it and came in and announced the name of a client who had just arrived. “Right away,” said Dori, rising from her seat, and carried forward on her high heels, she made for the door, flooding me with a wave of love as she paused by my side. She wanted to say something to me, perhaps to console me, but the client, an elderly, elegantly dressed man who was apparently too agitated to wait, opened the door and stepped into the room without waiting to be asked. She immediately flashed him one of her automatic smiles, and for some reason she introduced me to him, as if to banish any possible suspicion. “This is Dr. Rubin, who’s like a family doctor to us. Please come in and sit down.” The client nodded his head at me distractedly and sat down. She accompanied me to the hallway and said, “I understand that things didn’t work out with Professor Levine.”
“No,” I said, trembling with excitement. “He’s a strange man; I don’t understand him. He claims that I could have infected you with Einat’s hepatitis when I performed the blood transfusion in Varanasi.” She burst into surprised laughter — was she really unaware of Levine’s accusations? “Perhaps you really did infect me,” she said with a slight smile, and turned around and went back into her room, and through the open door I saw her folding the scarf and putting it into one of the drawers of her desk.
At seven o’clock that evening Dr. Nakash phoned me to ask if I could come immediately to the hospital in Herzliah. In an hour’s time an operation was scheduled to begin. It had originally been planned without an assistant anesthetist, in order to reduce the costs to the patient, but the day before Nakash himself had caught a severe cold, and this morning his temperature had risen, and although he had treated himself aggressively during the day, he was still afraid of spreading germs in the operating room, and he wanted me to come and “fly the plane” myself, though he would be right next door to guide and direct me. “Don’t you think it’s too soon to leave me on my own?” I asked in excitement. “No,” answered Nakash confidently, “you’ll be fine. I didn’t choose you by accident. I’ve been watching you in the operating room for a whole year now, and I’ve seen your grasp of internal processes. You understand what anesthesia means. Hishin hit the nail on the head when he praised you that time in the cafeteria. By the way, if you’re missing him, you’ll be able to see him soon, because he’s performing the operation tonight. But for God’s sake, Benjy, get on your horse and get over here as quickly as you can.” My spirits, which were low after the meeting with Dori, began to soar. I jumped onto my motorcycle, and with the resolution of someone on an emergency rescue mission I began to weave boldly through the heavy traffic leaving Tel Aviv. Nevertheless, I arrived at the operating room after the first premedication shot had already been given under Nakash’s supervision. In order to protect his surroundings from his germs he had made himself a strange mask which enveloped his entire head, leaving only two holes for his narrow black eyes. The patient was a woman of about fifty, plump and blue-eyed, whose figure reminded me of Dori’s. She had to have abdominal surgery, the correction of a hiatal hernia and a vagotomy — the kind of operation at which Hishin excelled, in spite of the mystery of the death of the young woman on whom he had operated on the eve of the trip to India. I put on a mask, and with the help of the nurses I began preparing the patient for the operation. Since Nakash was keeping at a distance from us, I myself began talking to the patient, asking her about her feelings and sensations, her husband and children, and in the meantime I exposed her chest in order to auscultate her heart and lungs again, to avoid any unpleasant surprises. From the corridor rose Hishin’s loud laughter, and Nakash signaled me to hurry up. I gave her the first shot of dormicum, smiled at her, placed the mask on her face, and connected her to the anesthesia machine, and felt her body relaxing under my hands; I gave her the first shot of pentothal, to relax her muscles, and inserted the infusion needle for the anesthetic; she lost consciousness, and I immediately felt her soul asking to be liberated and soar; I took hold of the cylinder with both hands and gave her an initial dose of oxygen; then I forced her clamped mouth open and inserted the small iron blade of the laryngoscope to prevent her mouth from closing, and in the narrow beam of light I succeeded in getting an exact view of the pinkish passage to the vocal cords, through which I slowly inserted the tube into her lungs. Then I turned on the respirator. The nurse exposed the round white stomach, cleaned it with alcohol, and drew the line for the incision. Nakash, who was standing behind the door with his face masked, like a white mummy with burning eyes, made a V sign with his fingers and signaled me to clear his field of vision, so that from a distance he could watch the monitors of the anesthesia machine piloting the body which had been abandoned by its soul.