In the afternoon the Ganges appeared in all its vastness, flowing slowly not far from the train tracks, and the Indian’s dark face glowed in the abundant yellow light. Overcome with awe of the holiness flowing next to him, he stopped playing cards and chatting to Lazar’s wife, rose to his feet full of power and vitality, and retired to the corridor to sink into meditation opposite the holy river. But while the Indian was evidently growing stronger in anticipation of the baptism awaiting him, the sleepless Lazar was growing weaker; his eyes kept closing, his head nodded, fell, and jerked up again. “Try to lie down and rest for a while, don’t be so obstinate,” his wife urged him, but he was unable to let go of his tension: “It’s too late to sleep, we’ll be there soon.” Finally she succeeded in persuading him to take off his shoes and lie down on the seat, and even to overcome his embarrassment at my presence and lay his head on her round stomach, while she held his head firmly between her hands as if to absorb his anxiety into herself. And it worked, for after a few minutes of vacillating and grumbling, Lazar plunged into a deep sleep, his breathing very relaxed, as if he had fallen out under the hands of a practiced anesthetist. His wife tried to engage me in conversation, but I stopped her. “We shouldn’t disturb him,” I whispered, “now that he has finally fallen asleep.” My reaction surprised her, and for the first time I noticed an offended blush spreading over her cheeks, as the faint down covering them glinted in the sunlight. But she obediently took off her glasses and closed her eyes, and an hour later, when the train slowed down in preparation for its ceremonious entry into the last smoke-shrouded station and Lazar emerged from the abyss of his sleep, he discovered that his wife had fallen asleep with him.
The elderly Indian passenger, who had been so friendly and talkative during the long journey, had now become estranged and remote in anticipation of its ending. His relatives, dressed in white as he was, were already waiting for him on the crowded platform, and they immediately swallowed him up without a trace. The three of us were left staring, dumb and paralyzed. The crowds we had seen on the streets of New Delhi looked sparse and quiet compared to this one. We were obliged to stick close to each other and hang on tightly to our suitcases, which seemed to have taken on a life of their own as they jerked about in the frenzied crowd. We had to stop at Varanasi to make our connection to Gaya, but we had had no idea how many tourists and pilgrims would be engulfing this major attraction at the height of the tourist season. While Lazar was haggling with a lively, dwarfish porter who had attached himself to us, one of the Lazars’ two suitcases was carried away by the crowd. At first Lazar gave way to despair and seemed on the point of tears. But then he recovered and plunged into the crowd, pushing and shoving in search of the thief, refusing to resign himself to the loss even though his wife was already trying to comfort him. In the end they left me in a corner in charge of the cart piled with the rest of the luggage while they set out with the dwarf to search for the suitcase. Again I found it ridiculous that they had to do everything together.
But perhaps precisely because of this, they succeeded in accomplishing the impossible, fishing the suitcase out of the stormy sea of people into which it had been swept, not stolen, and loaded by mistake onto another porter’s cart. Now it reposed on the back of the diminutive porter, dusty and battered, as if in the short time of its disappearance it had traveled across an entire continent. And the same thing, it seemed to me, had happened to us. New Delhi had given us the illusion that we understood the rules of India, but in Varanasi we were all gripped by a feeling of anxiety, and Lazar, whose deep sleep on the stomach of his wife had restored his alertness and vigor, instructed me in no uncertain terms to stick closely to him and not to start dreaming now; for indeed, with astonishing perceptiveness, he had caught me in the kind of dreaminess that sometimes took hold of me in the hospital at dawn, after a night on call, when I crossed the borderline into a new working day. “But what makes you think that he wants to dream now?” said his wife in surprise. “The dream is what’s happening here around us.” But Lazar didn’t answer her, because at that moment it seemed to him that one of the suitcases was about to fall off the cart racing ahead of us, and he rushed forward to catch it, only to trip and fall onto the platform himself. He sprang up immediately, an expression of wounded pride on his face, and also of offense, as his wife exploded into merry peals of laughter, which continued as she asked him if he had hurt himself while helping him dust off his clothes. “It’s not a dream, it’s madness,” he said, smiling at himself. “What’s going on here is total madness. Let’s get out of this station at least.” But the madness was waiting for us outside the station too, in the seething streets of the dusty, humid city, where the air was full of sweetish, colorful, unfamiliar stench. Without waiting for instructions, the porter hurried ahead, accompanied now by a flock of barefoot children, who stretched out filthy little hands to finger the smooth leather of the suitcases. “But where is he rushing to, that crazy little dwarf?” asked Lazar in astonishment. “To the hotel,” replied his wife. “The hotel?” echoed the bewildered Lazar. “What hotel?”
“He told me about a nice hotel overlooking the river, with a view of the bathing ghats the man in the train told us about.”
“But what hotel, Dori?” repeated Lazar in alarm, unable to believe that his wife had already come to an agreement with the little porter. “A hotel in the old city,” she replied, “next to the river.”
“Have you lost your mind, to follow a character like that to some hotel in the old city in the middle of all the muck? What’s come over you? I don’t understand.”
But his wife was unperturbed by this outburst. “What harm can it do to try? We’ve got plenty of time. The Indian in the train said it’s the only place to find a hotel, and since we’re stuck here, at least we’ll be able to watch their ceremonies from the window.”
“What window?” cried Lazar. “No, no, Dori, we’re not running from one hotel to the next to smell the rooms this time. No,” he announced firmly, “it’s out of the question, Dori. We’re not starting to look for a hotel in the old city; even here, in the new city, it’s barely tolerable. We’ll find a decent, civilized hotel — we’re completely exhausted already, and I don’t care how much it costs,” and he hurried forward to catch up with the porter.
The little man tried to argue, but in vain. He appealed to Lazar’s wife, as if she had made him a definite promise, but Lazar cut through his pleas with a wave of his hand, and the porter, no doubt disappointed at the loss of his commission, his feelings hurt by the broken promise, turned back and began trudging through the streets until he brought us to a very fine hotel, which met with general approbation but had only one vacant room. Since Lazar had no intention of allowing us to split up in Varanasi, we set out to look for another hotel, but there were no vacancies anywhere, until we reached a brand-new hotel called Ganga Mata, which had rooms but must have been very expensive, for I saw Lazar hesitating, in spite of his previous declaration that expense was no object. In the end, however, while his wife maintained a serene silence, he said, “Never mind, it’s only for one night,” and signaled the porter to hand over the luggage to the splendidly uniformed doormen. But then I saw his wife hold out her hand to stop the porter and grab hold of her husband’s arm. “You’re so obstinate. If we’re only here for one night, why should we stay at an ordinary hotel, just like thousands of other hotels all over the world? This porter knows about a special hotel, overlooking the river. Why shouldn’t we try it?” she said very gently and persuasively. And Lazar raised his hand hesitantly, as if to stop the doormen, who had already taken down two suitcases, and then laid it on his head with a curious gesture, as if to show the pain of his thoughts. “You decide,” continued his wife, “not because of the money, because of the view.” And suddenly, without any warning, Lazar gave in, announcing as he did so, “It’s your responsibility, Dori. If you don’t like the hotel there, don’t you dare say you want to come back here.” But his wife made no promises. “Trust my intuition,” she said. “This porter knows where he’s taking us. And besides, why shouldn’t we wander around a bit? You don’t have to carry anything. It’s still early in the day — we have time. And you’re not so tired now. You had a really good sleep in the train.”