But he had not yet come home from the army. The door was opened by Einat, with the sound of the washing machine spinning in the background. She had come home to do her laundry, and she now stood in the doorway, surprised and even a little alarmed to see me holding the medicine bottle in my hand, not only because she did not know her mother had been ill but also because she had thought that her father’s death would put an end to my relations with the family, not the opposite. Now that her face was so pale and her beauty had faded, I noticed a resemblance to Lazar that had not been evident before, as if the painful memory of seeing her father die before her eyes had carved his image secretly on her face. She was sloppily dressed in a greenish sweater and a pair of jeans that were too big for her. When she took the bottle hesitantly from my hand, careful not to touch me, I was afraid that in her distraction she was liable to send me away. I asked her if I could call the hospital. Without a word, still fearful, she showed me the way to the living room, which was now perfectly clean and tidy — no doubt the work of the maid. Einat went into the kitchen and shut the door behind her, ostensibly to give me privacy but actually to quickly finish eating the improvised meal I had interrupted. I phoned the internal medicine ward to ask about the patient whose surgery I had prevented at the last minute. Although I didn’t know his name, the nurse immediately knew who I was talking about, not by the details of his medical condition or his age but by his red hair, which had apparently made an impression on her too. It turned out that he had been returned to the operating room after a heated argument between Professor Levine and Professor Hishin, who had suddenly appeared in the ward and insisted that the operation take place. “So they did it anyway,” I said softly, thinking remorsefully that my excessive anxiety had led to a renewed outbreak of the rivalry between the two friends. “Did they mention my name, by any chance?” I asked. “Yes, Dr. Rubin,” said the nurse. “They’re angry with you and with Dr. Vardi for playing hooky.”
“Playing hooky?” I giggled at the use of this childish term. But was there any point in trying to explain my real motives? I put the phone down and went to ask Einat, who was sitting at the kitchen table polishing off a carton of cottage cheese, if I could make another phone call. The kitchen too was clean and tidy, and between the flowered curtains on the big window I saw that it was beginning to rain again. Einat smiled shyly. “What a question! As many as you like. Make yourself at home,” she said, and as I turned back to the phone to call Hagit and ask Michaela to come and pick me up here and take me home, she asked if I had time for a cup of coffee before I left.
I was of course happy to accept her offer. In the first place I intended to wait for Michaela to come and pick me up anyway, and, more to the point, I still hoped to see the mistress of the house when she came home. I wanted to try to get to know Einat a little better, and also her soldier brother, who suddenly arrived, soaking wet. Since I had last seen him in the corridor of the internal medicine ward he had exchanged his khaki uniform for the pale gray of the Air Force and his gun for a small, light submachine gun, no doubt thanks to the intervention of influential friends of the family, who had succeeded in getting him transferred to a service unit close to home and his widowed mother. Despite his surprise at my presence, which bordered on hostility, I tried to be nice to him. When I told Einat about Michaela’s plans to return to India, it was as if this simple announcement transformed her, rousing her from her apathy and even restoring a little of her previous beauty to her delicate face. “I knew it!” she cried enthusiastically, although she also expressed some doubt about how much fun it would be to wander around India with a baby. But when I told her that a good friend from London would be accompanying them, she was reassured. A good friend could be a great help. If only she could, she too would gladly join them, but nobody would give her permission to go now, especially after what had happened. It was impossible to tell whether she meant the hepatitis or the death of her father. “You need permission?” I cried in astonishment. “Who from? Your mother? I’ll give you permission.” And although I didn’t say in whose name I was giving her permission, she understood that it was in my capacity as a doctor, and her eyes lit up with a rare, provocative gleam. “And if I get sick again,” she asked, “will you come by yourself to fetch me?”
“You won’t get sick again,” I said confidently, “and if by any chance something does happen to you there, don’t worry. We’ll come to the rescue again. Why do you still want to go there, Einat? Wasn’t the first time enough for you? What draws all of you so much to India?” She was surprised at my question. “I thought Michaela had already infected you with the India bug.”
“Michaela is a lost cause. She’s already half a Hindu herself,” I replied. “That’s why she’s incapable of explaining anything to an outsider like me.” Einat looked at her brother, who was standing in the doorway listening to our conversation and eating a thick slice of bread. Then she bowed her head, trying to meet the challenge of finding a convincing explanation for the fascination with India. In a quiet, halting voice she began to formulate her thoughts. “A lot of things are attractive. But the most compelling is the sense of time. Time’s different there — it’s free, open, not harnessed to some goal. Without any pressure. At first you think it’s unreal, and then you discover that it’s the true time, the time that hasn’t been spoiled yet.” When she saw that I had not succeeded in understanding the depths of this other sense of time, she added, “Sometimes it seems there that the world’s stopped turning, or even that it never started turning in the first place. And every hour there is enough in itself, and seems final. So nothing ever gets lost.” A faint sneer now crossed her brother’s face, but when he saw that I was nodding my head in profound agreement, he crammed the rest of the bread into his mouth and went to pick up his submachine gun and duffel bag, which were lying in the middle of the living room floor.
But the shrill whistle of the front door bell interrupted him, and he opened the door to his wet, shivering mother, both of whose hands were full — one with a cake box and the other with a shopping bag and a dripping umbrella. Although she knew that her son was due to arrive, she broke into loud cries of joyful surprise and hurried to put down her packages and embrace him as if he had just come home from the wars, forgetting that there were other people present. In the end she gave Einat a quick kiss too and asked her to help her unpack her bag. When at last she turned her attention, with a suspicious smile, to the medicine I had brought her, the bird-cry pierced the air again, and Hishin appeared at the door in a heavy, waterlogged coat and with the old baseball cap once more on his head, carrying another shopping bag. He too was glad to see the soldier, slapping him on the shoulder and saiding, “I see we pulled it off” as if he had had a hand in the boy’s transfer. Without asking permission from anyone or taking any notice of me, as if I were some kind of ghost, he took off his coat and hurried over to the big desk standing in the corner of the living room. This was apparently the true purpose of his visit, for within a few minutes he had succeeded in identifying the documents he was looking for and separating them from the rest of the files and papers. Then he announced to Dori, with a satisfied look, “Now I can rest easy.” A violent attack of coughing prevented her from reacting, and when all her smiles did not succeed in calming the spasms racking her, she picked up my medicine and showed it to Hishin, who said nothing except that it was a strong cough medicine favored by Nakash, which did nothing to recommend it to Dori. “Wait, don’t go yet,” she said to her old friend, who showed no signs of intending to leave. “Let’s all have tea.” And after asking Einat to put the electric kettle on and see that the plug wasn’t loose, she went into her bedroom to take off her wet, muddy boots, to which a few autumn leaves were sticking. Hishin finished reading what was written on the label of the bottle and without saying a word sank into an armchair, the files in his hand, still ignoring me pointedly, as if I really had turned into a ghost. During the past month he had grown a little thinner, and there were new lines on his face, which still, in spite of everything that had happened, fascinated me. From the bedroom the sound of Dori’s coughing reached us. Hishin stopped reading and listened, a faint smile crossing his face, as if he did not believe there was an organic cause for her cough. His eyes finally met mine, and he suddenly said in a natural tone of voice, as if he were continuing a conversation that had already begun, “What happened this afternoon with Levine? What exactly did you discover that made you phone him from the operating room?” But before I had a chance to answer he silenced me with a rude wave of his hand. “Never mind. Never mind. Don’t start reciting numbers again. I know. You’re right. You’re always right. But for God’s sake, leave Professor Levine out of it. What do you want from him? Why did you call him?”