He reached the hotel at seven, a whole hour early; he figured they must have emerged from the shop and slipped out of his sight when he was paying the waiter and checking his change. He positioned himself on a soft leather sofa in a corner of the lobby not far from the reception desk, with his suitcase and knapsack next to him. Now he could survey the guests going in and out at his ease, paying special attention to the Indian women, never mind their age, in an attempt to discover the point at which a Westerner, with a rather shy sexuality, like his own, could connectwith them. And then he thought of his parents, and he decidedto call them, not because they would be worried, but simplyin order to hear the reassuring sound of their voices, for they too were to some extent responsible for his being here. But the reception clerk was unable to put through a direct international call from the hotel phone, and told him to go to a post office some distance away. The young doctor had no desire to forfeit the sofa he had taken over and decided to postpone the phone call. It was already eight o’clock, and the duskhad deepened, but the Lazars had not yet appeared. He felt no anxiety or anger, but only a gentle wonder. The street visible through the hotel entrance did not sink into silence and darkness as it had the night before, but took on a festive appearance; many new oil lamps were brought into the hotel lobby, and people walked past in festive attire. With a strange pleasure he said to himself, those two are crazy, their daughter needs them, she’s lying sick hundredsof miles away from here, and they’re strolling around and enjoying themselves like a couple of provincial tourists, looking for bargains among the Indian shmattes. But at nine o’clock he realized that something really had gone wrong. He remembered Lazar’sslogan, “So we won’t get on each other’s nerves,” but still he felt no bitterness or anger, only a sense of profound wonder. His return ticket to Israel was in his wallet; he had all the documents he needed with him. If they really disappeared, he would be his own boss again, and he would even be at liberty to go home.
At five past nine he picked up his luggage, left a message at the desk, and took a rickshaw to the train station. Perhaps they would make it at the last minute, even without their luggage. But from the minute he entered the heart of the storm in the old station — wherethe quintessence of travel fever raged in its purest, most hectic form, flooding the place in a dim yellowish light full of smoke and smells, swarming and groaning in the cars crammed with people, which belched out and sucked in bundles and mattresses from every possible opening — the doctor felt the last vestige of hope of finding the couple draining out of him. Nevertheless, he resolutely elbowed his way through the crowd, passing from platform to platform and finally reaching the right train, and the exact compartment, which turned out to be handsome and modern, with the air-conditioning lending a European chill to the air. The four seats looked comfortable, ready to be converted into narrow bunks for the night. The dark, opaque windows turned the travel fever of the station into a scene on a television screen. Was he going to wind up traveling into the depths of India on his own and against his will in order to meet a sick and unknown woman for an undefined medical purpose? he asked himself with the mild irony he had inherited from his Englishfather. And the wonder and loneliness he had been feeling all day welled up in him with a new intensity and washed away the remnants of his anger and disappointment. Now his soul was flooded with a sweet wave of mystery.
This is not yet the mystery itself, but only its sweetness, which has now been born not from the external reality existing outside the dark window but from the inner depths of this young doctor himself, who was introduced by Professor Hishin to his friend as the ideal person for the journey. For only the superficial eye of a tourist would seek to find mystery in the Indian train, for instance, which suddenly begins puffing and moving slightly to and fro, presumably in order to take on additional cars, toward which tall Tibetan monks in orange robes hurry, gently but firmly rebuffing obstreperous beggars, some of them real lepers with amputated limbs, thrusting themselves between the legs of porters carrying enormous bundles of rolled-up mattresses for a group of merry pilgrims passing along the platform. Delicate women flit among the throngs like moths, an intelligent third eye shining in the center of their foreheads and guarding them from bumping into Sikhs with wild black beards and carrying daggers, who are obliged — even they — to impatiently circumvent the solitarywhite cow which has innocently found its way into the stationand is now nibbling the sparse grass growing next to the platform, indifferent to the savage looks of the lean, half-naked Indians clambering over the cars and struggling with the train officials, who are trying to force them down from the roof of one of the ancient trains, where they are strapping their bundles and themselves between the iron railings and settling down for the night.
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’sa real mystery. And now a thin-facedold Indian nodsto him as he enters the compartment, dressed in a light-colored Europeansuit 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.