The little porter, who had been following their conversation intently and guessed which way the wind was blowing even before anything was said, became filled with happiness and energy and began pulling the suitcases out of the hands of the elegant doormen and replacing them on his cart. And I said to myself, I’m nothing but a piece of luggage here myself, or a child. It doesn’t even occur to them to ask me what I think; maybe I’m very tired and I’d rather stay in this hotel. I returned the smile beamed in my direction with a sullen look, and hoisted the medical knapsack wearily onto my back as if to say, What choice do I have, I’m just a hired hand here. I saw that my sullen look had upset Lazar’s wife, and as we set off she turned to me and said, “Perhaps you would have preferred to stay here?”
“What does it matter what I prefer?” I replied with a bitter smile. “I have no say in the matter.” And I saw that this domineering woman was hurt, as I had intended her to be. She blushed. “Why do you say that?” She spoke in an offended tone. “Everybody says you should be close to the river—that’s where all the rites take place. And since we’re here for such a short time, we should be close to the main thing, or at least in a position to get a good view.”
But before reaching the River Ganges, with the view of the heavy, gray ghats lapped by its waters, we had to make our way through winding alleys so narrow and jammed with people that our agile porter had to leave his cart in one of the little shops and hire two of the barefoot children who had been following us ever since we left the train station to help him carry our luggage. It was almost four o’clock, and there was a chill in the air, which took on a pinkish tinge. A steady procession of pilgrims, singing and playing on musical instruments, streamed purposefully toward the river, and scattered among them were young backpackers, rubbing shoulders with us on the right and the left and sometimes even smiling at me in a friendly, inviting way, as if I were one of them, for they had no way of knowing that the pack on my back was filled with medical supplies and that I was not free like them but tied to two heavy, middle-aged people in travel-creased gray clothes. Lazar looked tense and worried, jostling and being jostled as he hurried a few steps ahead of us in order not to lose contact with the band of children hot on the heels of the dwarf, who because of their smallness sometimes vanished completely in the crowd. The river was apparently close, for the dust of the alley turned muddy and the crowd tightened around us. From time to time a slender dark hand would touch my shoulder, asking me to make way for a corpse wrapped in white or yellow winding sheets, which would be carried past, raised up on steady hands, until it seemed to be floating of its own accord over the sea of heads surrounding us. I stole a look at Lazar’s wife, who was trailing behind us, picking her way fastidiously between the sewage canals and the slippery cowpats, slow but light in her low-heeled shoes, looking unsmilingly at the corpses floating through the alley to be burned on the banks of the river. She must be regretting her obstinacy now, I thought, and perhaps because she noticed the mocking smile on my face, she stopped for a moment, wiped the indiscriminating smile off hers, and called out to her husband to slow down. But Lazar was too intent on not losing the porters, who were now crossing courtyards, passing alcoves concealing gaudily painted statues and wild-haired ascetics, and finally leading us into a back alley where a very old but rather attractive country house stood, surrounded by dusty trees with tiny vegetable gardens planted between them. At the entrance to the house, which was decorated with dark little statues that were nothing but variations on male sexual organs painted red and black, at which Lazar stared in nervous amusement, a small group of Indians clustered, apparently waiting for the dwarfish porter and the new guests he was bringing from the train station. Without asking our permission, they rapidly sent the children on their way, took the suitcases, nimbly relieved me of the knapsack, and led us up three flights of stairs covered with a torn old carpet, passing rooms full of people on the way. On the third floor they ushered us into a big, dim room carpeted with colorful straw mats and containing two very large beds, a closet, and wicker chairs, and without losing a moment, they flung open a curtain and took us out onto a little balcony full of flower pots, which in the eyes of our hosts was the justification for our coming and the fulfillment of the promise made by the porter on the station platform. And who indeed could have imagined that we would emerge from that labyrinth of narrow, winding alleys to stand before this rich, spacious view, open from horizon to horizon, with the great Ganges flowing through its heart, glittering in the reddening light of the approaching evening.
Lazar’s wife uttered a cry of admiration and praised the view enthusiastically to the Indians. Lazar leaned silently on the balustrade, sighed, and smiled faintly to himself. Suddenly I understood his wife’s hidden power, and why he had been prepared to give up the new hotel so easily. He had a deep faith in her intuitions about people, and since she believed in the little porter and his promises to lead us to a high place overlooking the river, he gave in to her. And perhaps the fact that he would be saving a considerable sum of money had something to do with it too, for I had already noticed that in spite of the emergency that had precipitated the journey, he was not indifferent to its cost. A great deal of money had already been spent, and there was no knowing how much more would be needed on the way back, when the patient would be with us. It would be impossible to drag her through narrow alleys to a simple hotel, however unique the view from the balcony—which Lazar’s wife continued to praise extravagantly, to the delight of the hotel owners.
But it was only now that they realized we needed two rooms. The little porter had taken us for a family, perhaps imagining me to be their son on holiday with his parents. Even now, when they heard that I was only a doctor accompanying the Lazars to Gaya, they couldn’t understand why we needed another room. They would bring another bed right away, and set up a screen in the middle of the big room. Lazar looked at me. I could have refused immediately, but I wanted him to be the one to demand another room. The thought of spending the whole night in the same room with them seemed too much to cope with. They too seemed uneasy at the idea. “No,” said Lazar, “we’ll take another little room for him.” But it appeared that all the rooms in the inn were full, and the only solution was to put me up in a kind of shed next to the building used as a dormitory for backpackers and solitary pilgrims. Suddenly I felt very bitter toward Lazar’s wife, who had dragged us here, but I said nothing and picked up the knapsack, since I would rather sleep in the shed than share their intimacy. But she, feeling guilty and embarrassed, objected vehemently. The idea that they would remain here, with the spectacular view of the sacred river, while I was relegated to a kind of dormitory seemed to her so unjust that she began coaxing me to stay with them. “What does it matter? It’s a big room, we won’t take up a lot of space, they’ll bring a screen. Why should you miss the view of the river and the ghats? That’s what we came here for in the first place. I don’t like to think of you down there alone.”
“I don’t mind being alone,” I said, with a faintly contemptuous smile, but she didn’t understand what I was getting at and continued enthusiastically. “Once in a lifetime you get to see something this amazing. The room’s not important—it’s what you can see from it, the wonderful view, the river, the ghats, the pilgrims, and the night falling. Why should you sleep in some mean, wretched place? You deserve better.” And then she suddenly added, “Why should it bother you? Last night all three of us slept squashed up with the Indian in one little compartment.”
Lazar remained silent and gloomy, also apparently angry at his wife for complicating things. But she appealed to him helplessly to persuade me, touching his hand lightly to convey her request. And Lazar said quietly, “He’ll decide for himself where he wants to sleep, what do you want of his life?” And she said, “It’s not fair for him to sleep downstairs with all the vagabonds.” And suddenly, without warning—her conscience must have really been bothering her—she threatened that we would have to go and loo
k for a new hotel unless I agreed to share their room. Now Lazar gave me a despairing look. “Why shouldn’t you sleep up here with us, really? There’s no problem as far as we’re concerned, if you don’t mind. We’re leaving tomorrow morning, and the air’s better up here, and there’s such a special view.” His eyes were hollow, and his skin looked so gray that for a moment I felt concerned about his health again. In the meantime the Indians had decided for us, and two boys with gleaming white smiles brought in a folding bed and a red screen decorated with paintings of snakes, and without further ado Lazar’s wife indicated a place next to the window, where they opened the bed and set up the screen, and only then did she turn to me and say, “Put your suitcase behind the screen. Don’t worry, we’ll be quiet as mice, you won’t even know we’re here.”
I gave in. The view from the little balcony with its flower pots was so stunning and exhilarating after the long cramped train trip that I couldn’t bring myself to refuse the offer to remain in the room with them, especially since I knew Lazar’s wife wouldn’t give up until she’d searched all the nearby hotels for a decent room for me, and I felt sorry for the exhausted Lazar. But even though I had to sleep with them that night, I didn’t have to stay now and sit behind the screen on the folding bed until they had undressed and bathed, being careful not to expose themselves to my eyes. Though my clothes were also damp and sticky from the journey and the walk through the alleys and I too would have liked to wash and change, I immediately announced that I was going out for a little walk, to see the pilgrims dipping in the river and perhaps, before it got dark, the cremation rites at the famous “burning ghats” referred to in the guidebook. Lazar, who had already taken off his shoes and shirt and was busy massaging his big stomach, said with a tired smile, “Even though you’ve already proved that you’re not the one who gets lost and we are, please do me a favor and watch where you’re going, because there aren’t even any streets here, it’s all one big confusion, and if you get lost here you might as well be reborn as somebody else, because you’ll never find your way back.” And we all burst out laughing in a spirit of reconciliation, and we even forgave the stubbornness. I agreed to return by a certain time, as if the Lazars were my parents. When I went down into the little garden in front of the inn and looked at the maze of passages and courtyards surrounding me, for a moment I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. I decided to find someone, a boy or a girl, to guide me. Under one of the trees I saw the little porter sitting with his friends and eating his supper, and although his English was almost nonexistent, I asked him to lead me to the river, because he had already impressed me, not only with the enterprise that had attracted Lazar’s wife but also with his delicacy and tact. I knew that he would return me safely to the inn, which for a reason I could not explain suddenly tugged at my heart.
Indeed, he led me nimbly to the riverbank and to a ghat he called Lalita. There we descended many broken steps, making our way through the strong smells and colors of the pilgrims, Brahmins, and beggars. And then, without even asking me, the porter installed me in a boat which already contained two young Scandinavian backpackers, and we embarked for the center of the river to observe the rites from the sacred water. We saw women in saris descending the steps slowly and gracefully, cupping their hair in their hands and dipping it in the water, and half-naked men diving deep into the river and disappearing for a long time before they reemerged, purified. In the distance, all along the riverbank, we saw many more ghats teeming with pilgrims, all performing their religious duties in a tumultuous silence. And then, in the gathering dusk, loudspeakers began hoarsely chanting long prayers, and many of the bathers came out of the water and stood on the riverbank or the steps to pray and perform complicated yoga exercises. The boatman abandoned his oars and kneeled down to pray while the boat was swept toward the next ghat, where spirals of white smoke rose from a big red funeral pyre. The two tourists and I sat riveted by the sight of the boatman sunk in his prayers while the boat changed direction and floated aimlessly into the middle of the river, and now we could see that while one bank was teeming with people and activity, densely strewn with ghats and temples, the opposite bank was empty and abandoned, with nary a house or a human figure to be seen, evaporating into the void of the sky as if all that crowded holiness dissolved in the middle of the river and turned into nothingness. When the chanting finally stopped, the boatman rose from his knees and picked up the oars with a dreamy look in his eyes. I said to him in a friendly tone, “Shiva,” because I had read in Lazar’s guidebook that Varanasi was the city of the god Shiva, the Destroyer. His dark face immediately filled with interest, and he nodded his head, but corrected me: “Vishvanath,” and, dropping the oars, he spread out his arms to embrace the whole of the universe. “Vishvanath,” he repeated, as if to stress that this name was bigger and more important than that of Shiva. Gently placing my finger between my eyes to signify the place of the third eye, I repeated softly, “Shiva, Shiva?” while the two Scandinavians stared. But the boatman stood his ground, even though he seemed pleased by my knowledge. He corrected me again—“Triambaka, Triambaka”—and repeated, “Vishvanath, Vishvanath.” When he saw that I was disappointed by these names, however, he eventually acquiesced and said with a sly smile, “Also Shiva, also Shiva.”
When darkness fell, the little porter took me to one of the ghats where bodies of the dead were burned. First I saw how people threw flowers and sweets into a well; then, from a little distance, for the dwarf warned me not to go too close, I stood for a long time watching a body burn on a funeral pyre while the members of the family sat in a circle and chatted quietly. I waited until the fire went out, and in the dark, by the light of a torch, the family stood up and slowly circled the ashes, and one of them cracked the skull to liberate the soul into the river, and they gathered up the ashes to sprinkle them on the water. Only then was I able to return to our inn, which was already mostly shrouded in darkness. I gave the porter a few rupees and he put his hands together in thanks, but he did not leave me, for he was afraid that I would go to the wrong room, so he led me up the pitch-dark steps until I was standing in front of the door to our room. I knocked lightly to announce my return, but when there was no reply, I carefully opened the door. The room was dark and the big beds were empty. The Lazars appeared to have moved them closer together in my absence. On the balcony I made out the two heavy silhouettes. When I approached, I found them in their bathrobes, their hair still wet from the shower. All that was left of the spectacular view was deep, empty darkness; the temples and the ghats had completely vanished, and only a few solitary torches still burned on the banks of the Ganges, with mysterious shadows stirring around them. Next to the Lazars stood a stool covered with an embroidered cloth, with plates holding the remains of their supper. They did not notice my arrival, for they were deep in a conversation. I knocked lightly on the balcony door, and they both immediately turned their heads, smiling and very pleased to see me, like parents who had awaited their son. It turned out that in all this time they had not left the room but remained by themselves on the little balcony, content with the distant, general view. “You’ve been sitting on the balcony all this time?” I marveled. “We’re not as young as we used to be,” said Lazar complacently, “and this balcony is an experience in itself.” He was in a good mood, and he seemed pleased with me too, for succeeding again in not getting lost. His wife invited me to sit down beside them and tell them about my experiences on the river, but Lazar stood up and asked if I had had anything to eat. For a minute I couldn’t remember, since I felt no hunger, but when I replied in the negative he urged his wife to get up and clear away their leftovers. “We thought of leaving something for you,” he apologized, “but we know you prefer eating alone.” His wife said, “Never mind, we’ll go down now and get something for him. What would you like to eat?”
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