Thus, with my eyes fixed on the big clock hanging on the wall above the many-armed statuette we had received from Einat, which was standing on a high shelf, safely ensconced between two vases, I began to describe economically not only the first bout of lovemaking but also the second, to show how serious my battle with the soul inside me had been. I may have gone too far, for suddenly Michaela’s face went very red and she seemed stunned, not so much by the sex itself as by its repetition, which was a clear sign of the profound change awaiting us all. “If so, he’s got a strong grip on you now,” she pronounced, contemplating me with a mixture of pity and admiration. “Instead of entering some lifeless, inanimate object in order to animate it and be reborn, he’s latched onto a living human being in order to cling with all his strength to his previous place.” And when I maintained my silence she added, “Be careful, Benjy, that in the end you don’t lose your soul.”
“But I’ve apparently already lost it, Michaela,” I whispered with a very glum smile, shrugging my shoulders and taking my plate to the sink. And I took the key to the Lazars’ apartment out of my pocket, as if to prove to her the concrete reality behind the bizarre metaphysical exchange we were conducting, half in earnest, half in jest, over our kitchen table — a reality that for all its pain was also one which might thrill her. For before her very eyes an ethereal idea from the India she so adored and longed for was being incarnated, not by a Hindu but by a rational, practical Western doctor, a moderate man trapped in the mystical seam between body and soul, where even Stephen W. Hawking had floundered, paralyzed. My heart contracted now at the sight of Shivi’s eyes raised in deep attention to the words of the adults standing over her head. I had already noticed the peculiar attention she paid the conversations between her parents, an attention full of an inexplicable inner excitement, which led her now to rub her finger unconsciously on the perfect circle of the third eye which Michaela had painted on her brow and to turn it into a smudge spreading over her entire forehead. I looked at the clock. There were only a few minutes left before I had to leave for the hospital. I saw from close up that Michaela’s beloved statuette was covered in dust and even had delicate spiderwebs clinging to it. Michaela looked with a smile at the key I showed her. “Now do you understand the profound wisdom behind the custom of burning the widow on her husband’s funeral pyre?” she asked, and there was a malicious gleam in her eye. “No, I don’t understand it,” I answered honestly, a faint tremor of anxiety passing through me. “She has to be burned so that the yearning soul of her husband won’t steal into her through a stranger’s body. They don’t burn the widow to punish her for remaining alive, but only to protect the soul of some weak, innocent stranger who is prepared to lend his body to the husband’s eternal love.” I nodded my head, and with a certain absentmindedness, because it was already time for me to leave, I took the statuette down from its shelf and lightly removed the lacy covering of spiderwebs, examining it to see if there was any coordination among its six arms. “In that case,” I said, smiling, “do you think Dori should have been burned too?”
“Of course,” she answered unsmilingly, in a provocative tone, her face flushing. “If she made Lazar love her so much, let her follow him to the grave.” And with a new thought flickering in her great eyes: “And if she can’t do it by herself, she can be helped.” These last words, which had surely been said in a joke, struck terror into my soul, but I went on smiling, bending over Shivi, who seemed so interested in the statuette in my hand that I gave it to her. But she wasn’t ready to receive the unexpected gift, and the statuette slipped out of her little hands and fell to the floor, scattering its six clay arms in various directions, and after a moment detaching itself from its head as well. A cry of pain burst from me, but Michaela remained composed, as if she had been prepared for an act of revenge after what she had just said. She crossed her arms on her chest to ensure the restraint she had imposed on herself, showing no intention of kneeling down with me to pick up the pieces of the little statue so dear to her heart, nor any intention of answering my ridiculous question as to whether it might be possible to mend it. With satisfaction and a note of triumph in her voice she said, “Now I’ll have to go back there to find another one.” And when she saw that I wasn’t taking her seriously she added: “The only question we’ll have to think about is whether I’m going to take Shivi with me right away or whether I should leave her for the time being with you, or your mother, or, why not, with Lazar’s wife.”
But there was no time to discuss this question now. The operation in which I was to participate as an anesthetist was scheduled to begin in half an hour. Surprisingly enough, in spite of the sharp words we had exchanged and Michaela’s explicit announcement that she was going back to India, I did not feel that a real rift had taken place between us, and I left for the hospital feeling excited, and even a little happy at the idea that Michaela was giving me permission to continue my affair without throwing me out of the house. When she asked me just before I left if I would leave her the car in view of the rainy weather and the chores she had to do, I agreed immediately, since I had no idea that she meant chores connected with her trip to India. Surely the broken statuette alone could not have been enough to make her get up and leave immediately for the Far East. Nor did I believe that my infidelity had shocked her. A woman as free-spirited as Michaela wasn’t outraged by infidelities, hers or anyone else’s. No, it made more sense to think that what was happening to me had simply reawakened, with great intensity, her old longing for the spiritual climate in which she felt, as she had repeatedly explained to me, free and liberated, in a place that only seemed so wretched and defeated. But was it really only her old longing for India? Perhaps there was a new yearning behind it all, not for the great subcontinent but for herself, as the true source of what was happening to me, since more than two years before it had been she who had come back from India in order to tell the Lazars about their daughter’s illness. Now, just as I too was being swept up into an ill-fated karma, she felt that in order to rescue me she had to return to the starting point, and to take my baby with her, so that she might draw me back to the place where wise and understanding forces would come to my aid, working through those who needed me urgently — in other words, the truly sick and maimed of the world, waiting on the sidewalks of Calcutta for volunteer doctors to come to them from the world that called itself free and happy. But I only began to understand all this when Michaela finally decided to take Shivi with her, after Stephanie in London agreed to join her on this trip to India. On the morning in question, in the operating room, feeling slightly dizzy as I stood behind the anesthesia machine, I was thinking neither of Michaela nor of myself but of the woman I had left sleeping in the spacious apartment, either sick or well, who would soon wake up and find herself alone and begin to worry about when I, or somebody else, would come to keep her company.
When I reached the hospital I wanted to go straight to the administration wing to tell Lazar’s secretary that I had responded to the call she had referred to me in the fullest possible way, and to find out indirectly if she had already received any reports from the other party. But there was no time. So I waited until after the “takeoff” had succeeded and the patient had begun to sail gently along his appointed course before slipping into the anteroom to call her and tell her that I had made a house call and there was nothing to worry about. She thanked me gratefully. “I know we’re being a bit of a burden to you,” she said, glibly including herself with the woman who was constantly in my thoughts, “but I saw that Mrs. Lazar was a little lost, without knowing exactly who to turn to, because Lazar used to put the whole hospital at her disposal. And although everyone’d be happy to help her, after what happened, everybody thinks that someone else is taking care of her.”