At this point there was a stir next to the big door, and a curly mane of gray hair together with an excitedly waving hand appeared at one of the portholes. The anesthetist recognized the man and hurried to open the door. But now, having invaded the wing without a doctor’s gown or mask, the man seemed at least to hesitate before entering the operating room itself and called out from the doorway in a lively, confident voice, “Haven’t you finished yet?” The surgeon glanced over his shoulder, gave him a friendly wave, and said, “I’ll be with you in a minute.” He bent over the operating table again, but after a few minutes stopped and started looking around. His eyes met mine, and he seemed about to say something to me, but then the scrub nurse, who always knew how to read her master’s mind, sensed his hesitation and said softly but firmly, “There’s no problem, Professor Hishin, Dr. Vardi can finish up.” The surgeon immediately nodded in agreement, handed the needle to the resident standing next to him, and issued final instructions to the nurses. He pulled off his mask with a vigorous movement, held out his hands to the young nurse, who removed his gloves, and before disappearing from the room repeated, “If there are any problems, I’ll be with Lazar in administration.”
I turned to the operating table, choking back my anger and envy so that they wouldn’t burst out in a look or gesture. That’s it then, I thought in despair. If the women are on his side too, there’s no doubt which of us will be chosen to stay on in the department and which will have to begin wandering from hospital to hospital looking for a job at the end of the month. This is clearly the end of my career in the surgical department. But I took up my position calmly next to my colleague, who had already exchanged the needle Hishin handed him for another one; I was ready to share in the responsibility for the last stage of the operation, watching the incision close rapidly under his strong, dexterous fingers. If the incision had been in my hands, I would have tried to suture it more neatly, not to mar by so much as a millimeter the original contours of the pale female stomach, which suddenly aroused a profound compassion in me. And already the anesthestist Dr. Nakash, was getting ready for the “landing,” as he called it, preparing to take out the tubes, removing the infusion needle from the vein, humming merrily and keeping a constant watch on the surgeon’s hands, waiting for permission to return the patient to normal breathing. Still absorbed in the insult to me, I felt the touch of a light hand. A young nurse who had quietly entered the room told me in a whisper that the head of the department was waiting for me in Lazar’s office. “Now?” I hesitated. And the other resident, who had overheard the whisper, urged me, “Go, go, don’t worry, I’ll finish up here myself.”
Without removing my mask, I hurried out of the shining darkness of the operating room and past the laughter of the doctors and nurses in the tearoom, released the press-button of the big door sealing off the wing, and emerged into the waiting room, which was bathed in afternoon sunlight. When I stopped to take off my mask, a young man and an elderly woman immediately recognized and approached me. “How is she? How is she?”
“She’s fine.” I smiled. “The operation’s over, they’ll bring her out soon.”
“But how is she? How is she?” they persisted. “She’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry, she’s been born again.” I myself was surprised by the phrase—the operation hadn’t been at all dangerous—and I turned away from them and continued on my way, still in my pale green bloodstained surgical gown, the mask hanging around my neck, the cap on my head, rustling the sterile plastic shoe covers. Catching the stares following me here and there, I went up in the elevator to the big lobby and turned into the administrative wing, where I had never been invited before, and finally gave my name to one of the secretaries. She inquired in a friendly way as to my preferences in coffee and led me through an imposing empty conference lounge into a large, curtained, and very uninstitutionally furnished room—a sofa and armchairs, well-tended plants in big pots. The head of the department, Professor Hishin, was lounging in one of the armchairs, going through some papers. He gave me a quick, friendly smile and said to the hospital director, who was standing next to him, “Here he is, the ideal man for you.”
Mr. Lazar shook my hand firmly and very warmly and introduced himself, while Hishin gave me encouraging looks, ignoring the wounding way he had slighted me previously and hinting to me discreetly to take off my cap and remove the plastic covers from my shoes. “The operation’s over,” he said in his faint Hungarian accent, his eyes twinkling with that tireless irony of his, “and even you can rest now.” As I removed the plastic covers and crammed the cap into my pocket, Hishin began telling Lazar the story of my life, with which he was quite familiar, to my surprise. Mr. Lazar continued examining me with burning eyes, as if his fate depended on me. Finally, Hishin finished by saying, “Even though he’s dressed as a surgeon, don’t make any mistake, he’s first and foremost an excellent internist. That’s his real strength, and the only reason he insists on remaining in our department is because he believes, completely wrongly, that what lies at the pinnacle of medicine is a butcher’s knife.” As he spoke he waved an imaginary knife in his hand and cut off his head. Then he gave a friendly laugh—as if to soften the final blow he had just delivered to my future in the surgical department—reached out his hand, placed it on my knee, and asked gently, in a tone of unprecedented intimacy, “Have you ever been to India?”
“India?” I asked in astonishment. “India? Why India, of all places?” But Hishin laughed, enjoying his little surprise. “Yes, India. Lazar’s looking for a doctor to accompany him on a little trip to India.”
“To India?” I exclaimed again, still unable to take it in. “Yes, yes, to India. There’s a certain sick young woman who needs a doctor to accompany her home to Israel, and she happens to be in India.”
“Sick with what?” I asked immediately. “Nothing terrible,” said Hishin reassuringly, “but a little tricky nevertheless. Acute hepatitis, apparently B, which got a little out of hand and led to deterioration. And even though her condition seems to have stabilized, we all decided that it would be best to bring the young lady home as soon as possible. With all due respect to Indian medicine, we can still give her the best care here.”
“But who is she? Who is this woman?” I asked with rising petulance. “She’s my daughter.” The administrative director finally broke his silence. “She left on a tour of the Far East six months ago, and last month she caught this jaundice, and she had to be hospitalized in a town called Gaya, in East India, somewhere between Calcutta and New Delhi. At first she apparently didn’t want to worry us and she tried to keep it a secret, but a friend who was with her there came home two days ago and brought us a letter with a few details about her illness. Even though everyone’s assured us that there’s no danger, I want her home before any complications set in. We thought it would be a good idea to take a doctor along. It shouldn’t take more than twelve days, maximum two weeks, and that’s only because she’s stuck out there in Gaya, which is a little off the beaten track as far as trains and flights are concerned. To tell you the truth, I tried at first to entice your professor, who’s never been to India and could have done with a rest, but you know him as well as I do, he’s always too busy—and if he has got any time to spare, he prefers to go to Europe, not to Asia. But he promised to provide us with an ideal substitute.”
Ideal for what, I asked myself gloomily, to drag a girl with hepatitis around India on dilapidated old trains? But I held my tongue and turned to look at the secretary, who came into the room with a story about someone who had been waiting a long time to see the director. “Just don’t move,” commanded Lazar, “I’ll get rid of him in a minute,” and he disappeared, leaving the Hishin and me facing each other. I knew that Hishin had already sensed my disappointment and resentment of this strange proposal, because he suddenly rose to his feet and stood towering over me and started talking to me gently. “Look, I can see that you’re not enthusiastic about the idea of suddenly dashing off to India li
ke this, but in your place I’d accept the offer. Not only for the sake of an interesting free trip to a place you might never have the chance to go to again, but for the opportunity to get to know the man himself. Lazar is someone who can help you if you want to go on working at this hospital, in internal medicine or any other department. The hospital is run from this room, and Lazar holds the reins. Apart from which, he also happens to be a nice, decent man. So listen to me and don’t turn him down. You should go. What have you got to lose? Even if all you get out of it is a pleasant adventure. And besides, there’s not much to do for hepatitis. I don’t believe the young lady has managed to do any real harm to her liver or kidneys, but even if she has, it’s not the end of the world—the body will heal itself in the end. All you have to do is watch out for sudden hemorrhages, prevent the glucose level from falling, and of course keep her from becoming febrile. I’ll collect a few good articles on the subject for you, and tomorrow we’ll consult Professor Levine from internal medicine. Hepatitis is his baby—he knows everything there is to know about it, including things nobody needs to know. And we’ll put together a nice little kit for you as well, so you’ll be ready for anything that might crop up. And another thing, you can say good-bye to them in Europe if you like and take a vacation. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw your file—in the whole year you’ve been with us you’ve only taken one day’s leave.”
So he can’t wait to get rid of me, I thought miserably. He can’t even wait one more month till the end of my trial year. It was unbelievable. And then Lazar came back. “Well?” he asked with a broad executive smile. “It’s agreed?” But Hishin immediately and sensibly slowed him down. “Just a minute, Lazar, what is this? A man has the right to think things over.”
“Of course, of course,” replied Lazar, and glanced at his watch. “But till when? There are so many technical arrangements to make, and I planned on leaving the day after tomorrow, to catch the Tuesday flight from Rome.” But he must have sensed the threat of refusal in my continuing silence, since he stopped pressuring me and invited me to his home that evening to talk over the details and to give me time to make up my mind. It would have been churlish to refuse the invitation, and besides, I felt that these two assertive men wouldn’t allow me to start resisting them now. As I was making my way out of the room, address and directions in hand, Lazar called after me, “Wait a minute. I forgot to ask, are you married?” When I shook my head, his spirits immediately soared; he turned to Hishin with raised eyebrows and asked, “In that case, what has he got to think about?” and the two of them laughed good-humoredly.
The afternoon turned very rainy, and as I hurried from bed to bed in the intensive care unit, battling to stop a sudden hemorrhage in the young woman who had been operated on that morning, I made up my mind to refuse. If it was only for the sake of some weird trip to India that I had suddenly become ideal in the eyes of the head of the department, why should I give up the last month of rounds to which I was entitled? Every day I was learning new and fascinating things, every minute in the operating room thrilled me, even if I was only watching. What could I possibly gain from a sudden trip to India in the middle of winter? But as dusk descended and I arrived at my apartment wet and tired, prepared to call Lazar and give my decision, I had second thoughts. Why insult a man who might be useful to me one day? The least I could do was listen politely to the details before finally turning him down. I hurried to take a shower and change my clothes. At eight o’clock I rode north to an apartment block standing in a broad avenue of oak trees rustling in the wind and the rain. I covered my motorcycle with its tarpaulin, but when I saw that the rain was coming down harder I changed my mind and dragged it under the foundation pillars of the building. On the top floor, in a large, elegant apartment, I was impatiently greeted by Lazar, dressed in a loose red flannel shirt which made him look bulkier and older. “But how could I have forgotten to tell you to bring your passport?” he greeted me plaintively. “Is it valid? When was the last time you went abroad?” The last time I had been abroad had been two years earlier, on a short trip to Europe after graduating from medical school. I didn’t have the faintest idea whether my passport was still valid, and I tried with an embarrassed smile to fend off his enthusiasm and to indicate that although I had kept the appointment, I was still very undecided and had come only to hear him out again and think it over. “What’s there to think about?” cried Lazar in astonishment and a kind of childish anger. “But if you insist, come and see where I want to take you, and don’t panic; even if it looks like the end of the world on the map, we can make it there and back in two weeks, and even take in a few sights on the way, because I don’t want to turn the trip into one long via dolorosa either.” And he pulled me into a large, attractive living room. A boy of about seventeen in a pale blue school uniform shirt, very like his father except that his hair was long and soft, immediately stood up and left the room.
On a low glass table lay a large open atlas, with photo albums and travel guides scattered around it. “You’re not the only one who was taken by surprise,” Lazar apologized. “It fell on us like a bolt out of the blue when that girl knocked on the door yesterday with the letter. But first come and see where we’re going. Here’s New Delhi, here’s Bombay, here’s Calcutta, a kind of triangle, and here’s Gaya, a remote but holy town surrounded by temples. Tomorrow I’m going to Jerusalem to meet someone who spent several months there a few years ago, and after that I’ll have a clearer picture of what to expect. But just a minute, before we go any further let me introduce you to my wife.”
A woman walked into the room, a plump brunette of about forty-five, of medium height, her hair gathered into a rather untidy knot on top of her head, her eyes flashing me a frank, vivid smile behind her glasses. I stood up and her husband introduced me to her. She nodded affably and immediately sat down opposite me with a regal movement, crossing long legs that didn’t match the heaviness of her arms and shoulders, and began watching her husband, who went on drawing lines on the map of India and calculating times. As I tried to follow the route he was mapping out I sensed her appraising me, and when I looked up at her, her eyes suddenly lit up again in the same warm, lively, generous smile, and she nodded her head slightly in a gesture of approval. Then, as if she sensed my gnawing doubts, she suddenly interrupted her husband and addressed me directly. “Do you really think you’ll be able to leave your work at the hospital and go abroad for more than two weeks?” Her husband, who was very put out by this question, answered crossly in my place. “First of all, why do you already say more than two weeks? Where do you get that from? It’ll be less. I have to be back on the Sunday after next, don’t forget. And second, why shouldn’t he be able to leave the hospital? He can leave it for as long as he likes. Hishin gave him carte blanche—he can take it as leave due to him, if he likes, or as ordinary working days and we’ll find a way to make them up.” But his wife immediately protested. “Why at the expense of his leave? Why should he sacrifice his vacation for us?” And again she looked directly at me, and said in a clear, firm voice, which did not suit her plump, soft looks, “Please find out what payment you’re entitled to for your services on a trip like this. We will gladly compensate you for your efforts.”
Suddenly I felt stifled in the elegant, spacious apartment. The two middle-aged people sitting opposite me looked powerful and influential. “It’s not a question of money”—I began to blush—“and it really is true that I’ve got a lot of leave coming, but if I go away now, even for two weeks, it’s as if I’ve already finished my trial year in surgery, and I don’t want to miss a single day there.”
“In the surgical department?” asked the woman.
“Yes,” I replied, “I started in surgery, and that’s where I want to continue.”
“In surgery?” said the woman, looking at her husband in surprise. “We thought you were transferring to internal medicine or some other department, because Hishin told us that you weren’t going to continue in su
rgery.” A tremor of real pain passed through me on hearing the final verdict on my future spoken so casually by this strange woman. It wasn’t even a question of a position being available, I now realized, but a clear professional judgment against me. And Hishin’s tall figure seemed to loom up behind the woman, who never stopped examining me with her smiling eyes. “Who said I wanted to be an internist?” I burst into a bitter snort of laughter. “Even if Hishin has reservations, I’m still not giving up surgery. There are other hospitals, if not in Israel then abroad—England, for instance—and you can get excellent experience there too.”
“England?” repeated Mrs. Lazar, and her friendly smile disappeared. “Yes. My parents came here from England, I’m a British citizen, and I won’t have any problems doing my residency there.” Lazar, who was uninterested in the argument between me and his wife, suddenly beamed. “So I was right. I saw in your file that your parents were born in England, and I wondered if you were a British citizen too. That will help you on the trip to India. I suppose your English is perfect.”
“Perfect? I wouldn’t say so,” I said coldly, again trying to rebuff the single-minded enthusiasm of the man. “I was born and educated here, and my English is the same as everybody else’s—in other words, far from perfect. I usually speak Hebrew to my parents too, but of course, since I often hear them speaking English to each other, I’m fluent—not perfect, but fluent.” Lazar appeared more than satisfied with fluency and gave me a smile of undisguised gratification; it seemed that nothing could now detract from my virtues as a candidate for the trip to India, and he turned to his wife and raised his eyebrows. “What’s this? You haven’t offered our guest anything to drink! We’ve been talking so much we’ve forgotten our duties as hosts.” But the woman made no move to rise from the sofa. Instead she smiled at her husband and said, “Why don’t you make us some strong Turkish coffee? We’re all exhausted.”
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