In the meantime my parents’ pleas had an effect, and two days after their meeting she called them on her own initiative and said that she would agree to expand the scope of the wedding, which from now on was defined as “medium-sized,” on condition that she herself approved of the reception hall. Since the hall had to be medium-sized, the selection was not particularly wide, and from the uninspiring possibilities available, Michaela, who was becoming more alienated from me with each passing day, chose a smallish place in an old hotel in the middle of downtown Jerusalem. The entrance to the hotel was ugly, but the hall itself was attractive and well cared for, full of lush green plants, and the hotel owners boasted of their excellent catering. After Michaela had given her approval, we rode back to Tel Aviv on the motorcycle, stopping as usual at our favorite diner near the airport. She was tense, a little sad; this time she immediately removed her helmet, without flirting with her reflection in the big mirror. Even though I didn’t know that she had received the results of her pregnancy test two days before, I could feel her new tension, which came not only from the depressing appearance of the hotel but also from her decision to conceal the fact of her pregnancy from me so that we would be free to cancel the wedding at the last minute if for any reason we chose to do so. Maybe this was what she was hoping for in her unconscious mind, whose workings I tried to follow with interest and concern, feeling that I was conducting my own silent, separate dialogue with it.
The invitations were finally printed, with English facing the Hebrew, and my parents hurried to send a batch of them off to England, to give the family there time to prepare for the trip. Then we sat down to draw up a list of the local guests. My parents kept strictly to their promise to Michaela, careful not to exceed the limits of a medium-sized wedding. I noticed that my mother’s attitude to Michaela had changed as a result of her violent outburst and sudden tears in the Tel Aviv café; she was beginning to treat her with a mixture of apprehension and pity. The problem, of course, was who to exclude from the wedding, and who to invite on the assumption that they would not come. My father prepared three lists of possible guests. First, they asked me for the names of people I thought were “essential.” I wrote down Eyal and Hadas, Eyal’s mother, Amnon without his parents, two good friends from my army days, and two more from medical school. I added Dr. Nakash and his wife, whom I had never met, hesitated for a moment over Hishin and decided to leave him out, and confidently added Lazar and his wife, and of course Einat, thanks to whose illness I had met Michaela. My mother smiled sourly. “It’s funny that we’re not allowed to invite good neighbors, people we’ve been living next door to for so many years, while two total strangers like the Lazars will suddenly be our guests.” “Not yours,” I said, reacting sharply, “mine. Why not? I have my own reasons for inviting them. But don’t worry, they won’t come.” “Yes they will,” said my mother, confusing my father, who was poised to put them down on the list of guests who wouldn’t attend. In my heart of hearts I knew that my mother was right. Lazar’s wife wouldn’t forgo the chance of seeing me standing under the chuppah, not only because of the desire she might feel for me but also because she knew that I was marrying for her sake too.
And if she didn’t know, I reflected, I would have to let her know. With this aim in view, I would have to find a way deliver the invitation to her in person. About the wedding itself she must have heard from Einat, with whom Michaela was still in touch and whom she had even invited to a party to mark the end of her single state. I was a little excited at the idea of meeting Einat again, since I had not seen her since our return from India. “At least you had no trouble finding the apartment,” I said when I greeted her at the door and gave her a little hug. She smiled in embarrassment and blushed. Could she have seen me as something more than her physician during the time we spent together in India? She had put on a little weight, and the signs of the hepatitis had vanished, together with all traces of the Indian suntan, which Michaela still had. Now she looked healthy and very cute. She was wearing wide-bottomed black trousers and a white silk blouse with a richly embroidered little red bolero over it. Green earrings, the color of her eyes, dangled from her ears. She was shy, but also a little amused at being in her grandmother’s apartment, now taken over by strangers. When she was a schoolgirl, she said, she had often come here straight from school to have lunch with her grandmother and do her homework, and sometimes she had stayed over, sleeping on the couch in the living room. “Were you comfortable sleeping all night on that narrow couch?” I asked. “Why narrow?” said Einat in surprise. “It only takes a minute to convert it into a big bed.” The fact that the plain old couch could easily be turned into a large bed had escaped my notice, and if not for Einat I might never have noticed it. Despite Michaela’s protests, I moved the chairs and the coffee table aside, and Einat showed me the hidden lever that raised the couch and converted it into a large, comfortable bed, with an old sheet still spread over it and the long-forgotten summer pajamas of the child Einat. “You see, it’s a good thing you came,” I said to her affectionately. “You discovered your pajamas and we discovered an extra bed. When your mother handed over the apartment to me, she forgot to show me the mysteries of the magic sofa.”