No, in all this feverish activity in the old train station of Delhi the young doctor sees no mystery, nor even the faintest shadow of its sweetness. He sits quiet and still, five minutes before the train departs, in the right compartment on the right seat (he has repeatedly checked and asked), his suitcase and medical kit on the shelf above his head. In this serenity, which is almost joyful, submitting to the task to which an invisible hand has appointed him, a clear and genuine sign comes to him, and he cannot resist whispering to himself, as the train starts slowly gliding from its place, It’s not possible, they really have disappeared, those two, and it’s a real mystery. And now a thin-faced old Indian nods to him as he enters the compartment, dressed in a light-colored European suit spotted with ancient stains and carrying a shabby little suitcase in his hand, and makes him a little bow, careful to avoid the cup of tea that the train steward placed on the tray a few minutes before. He sits down shyly, takes a pair of cheap metal glasses with one cracked lens out of his pocket, and opens a Hindi newspaper. And anyone who now hears the ineffable word whispered naturally and spontaneously in his ear is finally at liberty to put it carefully down on the paper in front of him.
Two or three minutes after the train left the yellowish hell of the station and, as if suspended in the air, began crossing the pitch-black river, the door of the compartment shook with a violent knock, which so alarmed the Indian passenger that the newspaper fell from his hands. Through the little round window in the door I saw Lazar’s familiar gray mane again, and I hurried to open it and found both of them squeezed into the passage with their two suitcases. Lazar’s face was gray with exhaustion, and his eyes guiltily evaded mine. Even before stowing the suitcases on the racks, he admitted his failure. First of all he clasped my shoulders, then he clutched his head between his hands and began shaking it. “I don’t know what happened to us,” he said despairingly, “I don’t understand how we could have lost our way like that.” But his wife burst into loud, uninhibited peals of relieved laughter, astonishing the elderly Indian, who now folded his newspaper and put his cracked glasses away in his pocket in order to gaze at this boisterous woman. Her topknot had unraveled completely and her hair was falling onto her flushed, heavy face, from which all traces of makeup had vanished. They had apparently suffered an hour of extreme anxiety and were now overjoyed at having found me. Lazar kept on apologizing; as someone who knew how to blame others, he now seemed eager to take the blame upon himself, but also to explain exactly how and where they had gone wrong and to apologize again for the worry they had caused me. It turned out that they too had tried to call Israel, but nobody had warned them about the length of time it would take until the connection was made. “Enough already, what does it matter?” his wife interrupted him, annoyed by his repeated apologies. “The doctor wasn’t worried, believe me. He would have gone on ahead and we would have arrived a day later. I’ve already told you, he’s not the type to get lost.” She said this in a gentle but slightly mocking tone, and began combing her hair in front of the little mirror in the corner of the compartment, smiling at Lazar indulgently as she did so. When she had finished combing her hair, she bestowed a warm smile on the old Indian too, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her, picked up the cup of tea standing on the tray by her seat, and started to sip it with her eyes closed. Only now did Lazar begin to calm down. He started rearranging the luggage on the racks, tugging and pushing, and a little while later, when the steward brought us the ready-packed meals included in the price of our tickets, he sat down and ate heartily.
In the meantime his wife was already discreetly questioning the Indian about the purpose of his trip, and he responded willingly in reasonable English and also gave her his card. He was an official in a government department in New Delhi who had recently retired and was on his way for the first time in his life to Varanasi, in order to bathe in the Ganges before he died and to take part in the cremation rites for his eldest brother whose body would be taken there from the south by his sister-in-law and nephews. Every time he pronounced the words “before I die,” Mrs. Lazar’s eyes lost their smile and her face clouded, as if she refused to countenance his thoughts of death even by listening to them. But she was wrong; the thought of death only gave the old Indian pleasure. Since nothing in the universe was ever lost, all that was left for him to do was to ensure his rebirth in more advantageous conditions, which he was now about to do by bathing in the holy river.
“Unbelievable—this man is actually convinced that someone is going to bring him back to life again after he dies!” Lazar exclaimed in Hebrew, his hunger satisfied and a good-humored smile on his face, which was still gray and exhausted. His breathing sounded heavy, and for a moment I was afraid that his heart wasn’t functioning normally. The Indian passenger fell silent, as if he sensed that he was being made fun of. Outside it was already completely dark, there was no light to signal any passing reality, and for a moment it seemed as if the train were standing still, even though its wheels were turning. Soon the Indian was listening with interest to Lazar’s wife as she explained the purpose of our trip. He did not seem surprised to hear that three people had come specially from Israel to take the sick girl home. Perhaps she has sunk into Nirvana, he said, absolutely seriously, and it will take much strength to pull her out of it. Toward midnight a young boy came to remove the dirty dishes, to pour tea, to distribute blankets, and to help us convert our seats into bunk beds. Lazar’s wife and I climbed into the upper bunks, and Lazar and the Indian lay down in the lower ones. We switched off the light and covered ourselves with our blankets, but I was afraid I would not be able to fall asleep with so many people surrounding me. Strangely enough, the presence of the old Indian official below me seemed to reassure me. My face touched the dark blanket. I strained my eyes until I began to make out the outlines of the reality beyond the window—poor peasant houses and desolate dirt roads. Here and there I thought I could see a man plowing in the fields, and I asked myself whether a new day had already begun for him or the old one had not yet ended. From time to time the train slowed down at little country stations, gliding silently past the shadowy, blanket-wrapped figures that crouched next to the tracks and avidly examined the passing train. Lazar’s wife fell asleep immediately and began to snore, but Lazar was still tossing and turning on his narrow bunk. Every now and then he got up and put his hand on his wife to stop her snoring, but his touch only succeeded in interrupting her snores for a few minutes, after which they began welling up again, gently but strongly. Finally he woke her up. “Dori,” he whispered firmly, “Dori, you’re disturbing everybody.” She woke up, raised herself slightly, looked around in confusion, saw me, nodded at her husband as if agreeing with what he had said, and sank back into a deep sleep, carrying me off with her.
Lazar was clearly as resistant to sleep in trains as he was in planes. When I woke up at dawn, stunned by the clamor of the wheels, which my deep sleep had succeeded in suppressing, I saw him sitting heavily on his low bunk, sad and lonely without his smiling wife at his side. The moment he sensed that I had opened my eyes, he tried to latch on to me. Although I would have been happy to go on snuggling into my warm, narrow bunk, I felt his distress and climbed down to talk to him. It transpired that he had spent most of the night sitting up in bed or prowling around the train. He had even managed to wash and shave. He was too tense to fall asleep, or even to read. Worry about the state in which he would find his daughter was eating him up, and he was preoccupied too by interrupted business at the hospital. I took the opportunity to ask him about his work, and he responded willingly, but suggested we continue our conversation in the corridor. There was no need to disturb those who always managed to sleep in spite of everything, he said with a smile, and I didn’t know if he was referring to his wife or if he also had in mind the old Indian, who had curled up into a little white ball on half his bunk, as if rehearsing the fetal position in anticipation of his rebirth. In the corridor of the train, which was now racing through reddish hill
s, I began interrogating Lazar about the hospital, discovering through his administrative point of view new and surprising things even about the surgical department, which I thought I knew so well. Although he was not familiar with the professional medical aspects of our work, he had a surprisingly good grasp of the way the department was organized, and he was astonishingly well informed about the personal lives of the doctors and nurses. He had something to tell me about everyone whose name I mentioned, and was quick to express an opinion or assessment of them as well. Sometimes he added a story about a power struggle which had ended in success or failure. I suppose he knows all about me too, I thought to myself, and perhaps he even has an opinion of my abilities, which he got from people whom I would never have imagined took the trouble to think about me, but he’s too discreet to drop me a hint. I asked him about plans for the future, hoping to hear of new openings, but he sighed and began throwing out figures about budget cuts, which were doubly painful in the light of his desire to expand by constructing buildings with two operating rooms and up-to-the-minute laboratories, for example, whose future location he sketched in the air with broad movements.
In the meantime the first light of morning broke in the hazy sky, and a large round sun rose from an unexpected direction. Thus the day of the long journey to Varanasi began, in the glow of dirt roads, huts, and villages slipping slowly past the dark windows and the radiant, aromatic dimness of the big stations where we suddenly stopped among trains of various kinds and colors with droves of passengers getting in and out. During the few minutes of the stop, Lazar would sometimes hurry out to the stalls crowding the platform and bring us sweets or chapatis or bottles of unfamiliar effervescent drinks. His wife, if she didn’t join him, would stand at the window so as not to let him out of her sight. I had noticed their craving for sweet things in Rome, and even in India they hesitate suck and chew all kinds of candies whose names the Indian passenger taught them to pronounce. He himself had already changed his spotted old suit for a kind of white robe, which gave rise to a pleasant, intimate feeling, and indeed he was soon deep in conversation with Lazar’s wife, who seemed amused by his views on life and the world, but who was careful to question him in a tactful, friendly manner. This won him over to such an extent that he soon opened his little suitcase, took out an old deck of cards illustrated with all kinds of gaudy gods and demigods, and tried to teach us a kind of Indian poker, whose peculiar rules made her laugh so merrily that it seemed she had completely forgotten the purpose of our journey.
In the afternoon the Ganges appeared in all its vastness, flowing slowly not far from the train tracks, and the Indian’s dark face glowed in the abundant yellow light. Overcome with awe of the holiness flowing next to him, he stopped playing cards and chatting to Lazar’s wife, rose to his feet full of power and vitality, and retired to the corridor to sink into meditation opposite the holy river. But while the Indian was evidently growing stronger in anticipation of the baptism awaiting him, the sleepless Lazar was growing weaker; his eyes kept closing, his head nodded, fell, and jerked up again. “Try to lie down and rest for a while, don’t be so obstinate,” his wife urged him, but he was unable to let go of his tension: “It’s too late to sleep, we’ll be there soon.” Finally she succeeded in persuading him to take off his shoes and lie down on the seat, and even to overcome his embarrassment at my presence and lay his head on her round stomach, while she held his head firmly between her hands as if to absorb his anxiety into herself. And it worked, for after a few minutes of vacillating and grumbling, Lazar plunged into a deep sleep, his breathing very relaxed, as if he had fallen out under the hands of a practiced anesthetist. His wife tried to engage me in conversation, but I stopped her. “We shouldn’t disturb him,” I whispered, “now that he has finally fallen asleep.” My reaction surprised her, and for the first time I noticed an offended blush spreading over her cheeks, as the faint down covering them glinted in the sunlight. But she obediently took off her glasses and closed her eyes, and an hour later, when the train slowed down in preparation for its ceremonious entry into the last smoke-shrouded station and Lazar emerged from the abyss of his sleep, he discovered that his wife had fallen asleep with him.
The elderly Indian passenger, who had been so friendly and talkative during the long journey, had now become estranged and remote in anticipation of its ending. His relatives, dressed in white as he was, were already waiting for him on the crowded platform, and they immediately swallowed him up without a trace. The three of us were left staring, dumb and paralyzed. The crowds we had seen on the streets of New Delhi looked sparse and quiet compared to this one. We were obliged to stick close to each other and hang on tightly to our suitcases, which seemed to have taken on a life of their own as they jerked about in the frenzied crowd. We had to stop at Varanasi to make our connection to Gaya, but we had had no idea how many tourists and pilgrims would be engulfing this major attraction at the height of the tourist season. While Lazar was haggling with a lively, dwarfish porter who had attached himself to us, one of the Lazars’ two suitcases was carried away by the crowd. At first Lazar gave way to despair and seemed on the point of tears. But then he recovered and plunged into the crowd, pushing and shoving in search of the thief, refusing to resign himself to the loss even though his wife was already trying to comfort him. In the end they left me in a corner in charge of the cart piled with the rest of the luggage while they set out with the dwarf to search for the suitcase. Again I found it ridiculous that they had to do everything together.
But perhaps precisely because of this, they succeeded in accomplishing the impossible, fishing the suitcase out of the stormy sea of people into which it had been swept, not stolen, and loaded by mistake onto another porter’s cart. Now it reposed on the back of the diminutive porter, dusty and battered, as if in the short time of its disappearance it had traveled across an entire continent. And the same thing, it seemed to me, had happened to us. New Delhi had given us the illusion that we understood the rules of India, but in Varanasi we were all gripped by a feeling of anxiety, and Lazar, whose deep sleep on the stomach of his wife had restored his alertness and vigor, instructed me in no uncertain terms to stick closely to him and not to start dreaming now; for indeed, with astonishing perceptiveness, he had caught me in the kind of dreaminess that sometimes took hold of me in the hospital at dawn, after a night on call, when I crossed the borderline into a new working day. “But what makes you think that he wants to dream now?” said his wife in surprise. “The dream is what’s happening here around us.” But Lazar didn’t answer her, because at that moment it seemed to him that one of the suitcases was about to fall off the cart racing ahead of us, and he rushed forward to catch it, only to trip and fall onto the platform himself. He sprang up immediately, an expression of wounded pride on his face, and also of offense, as his wife exploded into merry peals of laughter, which continued as she asked him if he had hurt himself while helping him dust off his clothes. “It’s not a dream, it’s madness,” he said, smiling at himself. “What’s going on here is total madness. Let’s get out of this station at least.” But the madness was waiting for us outside the station too, in the seething streets of the dusty, humid city, where the air was full of sweetish, colorful, unfamiliar stench. Without waiting for instructions, the porter hurried ahead, accompanied now by a flock of barefoot children, who stretched out filthy little hands to finger the smooth leather of the suitcases. “But where is he rushing to, that crazy little dwarf?” asked Lazar in astonishment. “To the hotel,” replied his wife. “The hotel?” echoed the bewildered Lazar. “What hotel?”
“He told me about a nice hotel overlooking the river, with a view of the bathing ghats the man in the train told us about.”
“But what hotel, Dori?” repeated Lazar in alarm, unable to believe that his wife had already come to an agreement with the little porter. “A hotel in the old city,” she replied, “next to the river.”
“Have you lost your mind, to follow a character like th
at to some hotel in the old city in the middle of all the muck? What’s come over you? I don’t understand.”
But his wife was unperturbed by this outburst. “What harm can it do to try? We’ve got plenty of time. The Indian in the train said it’s the only place to find a hotel, and since we’re stuck here, at least we’ll be able to watch their ceremonies from the window.”
“What window?” cried Lazar. “No, no, Dori, we’re not running from one hotel to the next to smell the rooms this time. No,” he announced firmly, “it’s out of the question, Dori. We’re not starting to look for a hotel in the old city; even here, in the new city, it’s barely tolerable. We’ll find a decent, civilized hotel—we’re completely exhausted already, and I don’t care how much it costs,” and he hurried forward to catch up with the porter.
The little man tried to argue, but in vain. He appealed to Lazar’s wife, as if she had made him a definite promise, but Lazar cut through his pleas with a wave of his hand, and the porter, no doubt disappointed at the loss of his commission, his feelings hurt by the broken promise, turned back and began trudging through the streets until he brought us to a very fine hotel, which met with general approbation but had only one vacant room. Since Lazar had no intention of allowing us to split up in Varanasi, we set out to look for another hotel, but there were no vacancies anywhere, until we reached a brand-new hotel called Ganga Mata, which had rooms but must have been very expensive, for I saw Lazar hesitating, in spite of his previous declaration that expense was no object. In the end, however, while his wife maintained a serene silence, he said, “Never mind, it’s only for one night,” and signaled the porter to hand over the luggage to the splendidly uniformed doormen. But then I saw his wife hold out her hand to stop the porter and grab hold of her husband’s arm. “You’re so obstinate. If we’re only here for one night, why should we stay at an ordinary hotel, just like thousands of other hotels all over the world? This porter knows about a special hotel, overlooking the river. Why shouldn’t we try it?” she said very gently and persuasively. And Lazar raised his hand hesitantly, as if to stop the doormen, who had already taken down two suitcases, and then laid it on his head with a curious gesture, as if to show the pain of his thoughts. “You decide,” continued his wife, “not because of the money, because of the view.” And suddenly, without any warning, Lazar gave in, announcing as he did so, “It’s your responsibility, Dori. If you don’t like the hotel there, don’t you dare say you want to come back here.” But his wife made no promises. “Trust my intuition,” she said. “This porter knows where he’s taking us. And besides, why shouldn’t we wander around a bit? You don’t have to carry anything. It’s still early in the day—we have time. And you’re not so tired now. You had a really good sleep in the train.”
Open Heart Page 8