After midnight, although an unexpected spring rain had begun to fall, she put the big helmet on her head again and climbed happily onto the motorcycle. She could have stayed the night, of course, but I didn’t suggest it. In spite of my sincere desire to speed things up between us, I preferred, after two consecutive bouts of lovemaking, to spend the night alone in my big bed and put my thoughts in order. When I got back I collected the pieces of the broken cup from the sink and put them into a plastic bag, not because I thought the cup could be mended but because it was part of a set and I didn’t want to throw it away without first getting the landlady’s permission. I got in touch with Michaela the next day even though I knew she worked all day Saturday in the café. I wanted to arrange a couple of dates for the week after, and especially to make a firm date for our trip to Jerusalem together. I was afraid that the longing for India of which she spoke so frequently and the grayness of her life in Tel Aviv might overwhelm her, and she might give in to a sudden impulse to take off for the Far East. If I didn’t want to lose her, I thought, I would have to keep in constant touch. But since I was now working a couple of night shifts a week at the Magen-David-Adom station in the south of the city in addition to the private work in the Herzliah hospital, the possibilities for meeting her were limited. I therefore persuaded her to come to the first-aid station after her work at the café to keep me company, and to accompany me on house visits, which she enjoyed very much, since they reminded her of her days in Calcutta. At first the patients and their families were confused by her appearance as she came in behind me like some visitor from outer space, her helmet tucked under her arm, her great eyes beaming signals from an enchanted world. But since I’d immediately introduce her as a nurse (and sometimes she’d even help me conduct the examinations), they quickly got used to her presence. And she too, to my delight, began to get used to me. “Do you like me?” I would ask, testing her. “Just as much as you like me,” she would answer immediately, an enigmatic smile passing like an imperceptible ripple over her blank face. But she stopped complaining about her longing for India, as if some of it had been absorbed by our relationship, and some by the sheer fact of my work. I had no doubt that she was attracted to the medical side of my identity, and perhaps this was the secret reason why she had been so eager to meet me at Eyal’s wedding. She reminded me of my father in the way she cross-examined me about diseases and symptoms, sometimes even from the back of the motorcycle, in order to understand the vague and tenuous border between sickness and health. And exactly as with my father, she had a pure intellectual curiosity, with no desire to identify personal aches and pains or to draw conclusions about her own body, which seemed sturdy enough, and had preserved the Indian tan I had already noticed on that first brief meeting in the Lazars’ living room, when I had mistaken her for a young boy. In fact, this impression of a slight spiritual affinity between Michaela and my father was reinforced by the common language they found on our very first visit to my parents’ home, just ten days after Eyal’s wedding, which we all still remembered as possessing a spiritual power whose nature we did not really understand.
The visit to my parents was important to me, since I wanted to get a sense of their reaction to Michaela before I made any fateful decisions. If I had known that she was pregnant, however, a fact she was still ignorant of herself, I would certainly not have taken her on the motorcycle but tried to catch one of the last buses to Jerusalem instead. Friday was always the busiest day for surgery in the Herzliah hospital, since on Fridays the surgeons in the big hospitals abandon their public patients to the care of their relatives and take time off for private operations, which sometimes last until after the beginning of the Sabbath. And indeed, by the time I examined the pupils of the last patient and wrapped him in heated sheets to make up for the heat he had lost during surgery, there was nothing left of the waves visible from the windows but faint lines of foam trembling in the dusk. Nevertheless, in spite of how late it was, I had no intention of giving up the visit to Jerusalem, and I called my parents and told them that we would be late and they should not wait for us with dinner — advice they ignored in the hope that we would not be as delayed as I thought, and in fact we left before too long. Michaela was soon ready, and I raced the Honda until it flew over the road, not only because of the lateness of the hour but also because I knew that Michaela delighted in speed and expected me to satisfy her desire. At eight o’clock, with the beginning momentum of the ascent at Sha’ar-Hagai, the road suddenly opened up in front of us, and a full moon rising between the mountains began to sail our way, occasionally dipping behind the cypresses and pines, which gave off a fragrance in the spring air that accompanied us all the way to my parents’ house. My father, listening for the sound of the motorcycle, heard it entering the street and came out onto the steps to meet us. I noticed that he was struck, perhaps even startled, by Michaela’s enormous eyes. But I knew that their blueness, like the color of his own eyes, would have a reassuring effect on him, and indeed, he immediately began to pay careful attention to her, taking her helmet and chivalrously helping her remove her army jacket, and he began chattering vivaciously, this quiet man, as he did so. My mother was more circumspect, examining my face to see what I expected of her on this visit I had imposed on them.