There was no restaurant in the hotel, only a small, dim bar in which a few guests in white turbans and old-fashioned European suits sat paging through newspapers and conversing quietly in English, as if they were actually Britons who had been left behind when the Empire was abandoned and whom the years had darkened into old Indians. I changed a hundred dollars into rupees at the reception desk and emerged into a little street full of soft, dry sunlight, still clad in the thin skin of the English identity in which I had been pleasantly and secretly wrapped since landing in India. Unwilling to station myself, like an avid Israeli tourist, in front of the trays heaped up on the many food stalls, in order to nibble something sticky and mysterious, I decided to go back to the first, rejected hotel, where I had caught a glimpse of a large restaurant. I succeeded in retracing our footsteps with surprising ease, and entered the restaurant, where I examined the food lying on the tables before choosing the dish I fancied, a portion of roast meat buried in a thick black chapati resting on a large yellowish leaf. My hunger satisfied, I felt an urge to go upstairs and take a look at one of the rooms, to see what Mrs. Lazar had found so offensive. An Indian servant took me up to the second floor to show me the only vacant room left in the hotel, possibly the same room they had shown her. It was, in fact, a spacious room, with a view of a large, reddish fortress in the distance. I concentrated on the details, trying to see them through her eyes and understand what had put her off. The bed was large and covered with a gray blanket, clean but torn at the edges. One of the walls bore long thin stains, as if someone had thrown a drink at it. I took a step into the room in order to smell it. The Indian smiled at my side. I couldn’t smell a thing, apart from a faint, sweetish whiff of mold. What, then, had made her recoil? I wondered, thinking of the pampered woman with a new and unfamiliar anger.
I left the room, but instead of returning to our hotel, although I was tired and sticky, I set out for the fort I had just seen through the window. I didn’t want to waste a minute of my time in this fascinating place. We had already been told at the airport that we would have to travel from New Delhi to Gaya by train or bus, since at this time of year, with so many people on the move, we had no chance of getting onto a plane, or even perhaps of obtaining an air-conditioned compartment on the train. I assumed that Lazar, in a hurry to get back to Israel for his important meeting, would not want to hang around in New Delhi, and in spite of his promise about the fine sights we would see on the way, he would probably insist on setting out tomorrow, or at the most the day after tomorrow, in order to reach our destination as quickly as possible. And since I had a feeling that we would find the hepatitis patient in a worse state than her parents imagined and that from the minute we arrived I would have to be at her beck and call, because practical people like the Lazars didn’t drag a doctor to the ends of the earth at their own expense for nothing, I had better make the most of every chance I got to take in whatever I could of the magic of this place, which was already beginning to draw me to it.
And so much the better, I reflected, that I was sticky and dirty from the journey; it would make me freer in my first contact with the reality of India, which seemed to be flowing and pouring and thickening around me like colorful lava; while at the same time my secret English identity would protect me from getting into trouble. And so, after writing down the name of the hotel on a piece of paper, I allowed myself to roam the filthy, crowded streets at will, proceeding slowly and steadily in the direction of the reddish stone fortress. By twists and turns, without asking anyone the way, I finally reached my goal, and discovered that my attraction to it had not been in vain. A wall stretched for hundreds of yards in the same reddish color which had initially caught my eye, and to which the light of the setting sun had now added a special charm. For a moment I searched for English tourists again, so that I could join them and rub up against the sounds of my parents’ language. But the only people standing at the gate were a few hesitant Indians, who were being urged by the guards to go in quickly before they shut the fort, which was indeed, with surprising simplicity, called the Red Fort. Although it was too late for a comprehensive tour I went in, almost the last to do so. I passed through an arcade of elegant shops selling antiquities and souvenirs, and from there to several exquisite little pavilions, particularly the one called the Painted Palace, which were already growing dark in the gathering dusk and which had been almost deserted by the tourists. I was still trying as hard as I could to feel like the hero of a movie with definite values and a clear plot, as if this were the only way to give some meaning to the trip that had been suddenly forced on me and to console me for the loss of my prospects in Hishin’s department at the hospital.
When I emerged from the gates of the fort with the last of the tourists, my soul stirred by the little I had managed to see, the sun had already set, darkness was rapidly falling, and there was a new chill, accompanied by soft raindrops, in the air, apparently coming from the direction of the broad river which I had glimpsed from one of the windows in the fort. I thought that it was the Ganges, until the guide corrected me and said that it was called the Yamuna, and it only joined the Ganges at a distance of some six hundred miles from here. And even though my weariness had hardened into what felt like an extra organ inside me, I told myself that if I had already come so far and enjoyed so much, I should go and see the river too, for even if it wasn’t the famous Ganges, it would have some spiritual significance which could teach me something new. Because by tomorrow evening my independent ramblings would all too quickly end, and I would be sitting in a bus or a train, squeezed between Lazar and his wife, with their anxiety about their sick daughter growing more overpowering the closer we got to the hospital. I continued eastward in the direction of the river in spite of the encroaching darkness. With my father’s sturdy old windbreaker to protect me from the cold and occasional snatches of English, local or otherwise, rising from the darkness to encourage me, I began making my way through rows of wretched hovels whose inhabitants seemed quite friendly, or at least not actively hostile.
In spite of the chill and the fine drizzle, the animated voices of women doing their washing or even bathing rose from the river, and from time to time the bobbing light of a lamp revealed their lively movements. I stood there for a long time in the fragrant rain, until I heard a long-drawn-out hoot and a very long illuminated train moved out of a nearby station and began crossing the river on an invisible bridge, as if it were floating between heaven and earth before sinking into the black horizon. At that moment I made up my mind to reconcile myself to this enforced journey and to stop inwardly protesting against Hishin for giving in to Lazar’s manipulations, and I allowed my profound weariness to turn me in the direction of my waiting bed, festooned with its chain of yellow, slightly wilting marigolds.
But who could have guessed that the heavy darkness had fallen not only on the river and its environs but on large sectors of the old city as well, despite the streetlights scattered here and there, whose dim light only succeeded in blurring the landmarks I had memorized in order to lead me back? I thus had no alternative but to repeat the name of the first, rejected hotel to passersby, who were usually full of goodwill but also confusing and misleading. To my dismay, I found myself recognizing shops and stalls which I had already passed, until I realized that I had been going around in circles without anyone’s warning me that the streets here went around a square and led nowhere. I immediately lost all confidence in the directions I had been given and began accosting people lying on the sidewalks and demanding explanations, even if I had to wake them up. Somehow I eventually found my way to the rejected hotel, which to my surprise was brightly lit and full of the sounds of music and singing because of a wedding celebration, which I stood and watched for a while as if spellbound. From there I remembered the way to our hotel, which looked dark and silent.