Now we waited for the Lazars to return. The monk went away, and one of the Japanese girls took Einat to the toilet with two transparent sterile containers I gave her for a urine sample and if possible a stool as well. I remained with the other girl, and made no bones about asking her for a fresh cup of tea, which she was happy to give me, adding a little dry cake as well. Since she seemed intelligent, I asked her what she was looking for in Bodhgaya, and she told me about a local course in a kind of meditation called Vipassana, whose main feature was abstinence from speech for two weeks. “For that you have to come all the way from Japan?” I asked with a smile. “Couldn’t you keep quiet for two weeks at home?” But it transpired that silence next to the Buddha’s sacred bo tree had a significance that was different from silence anywhere else. Then I asked her to tell me something about the Buddha and what his teachings could mean to a rational, secular man like myself, who had no inclination to mysticism or belief in reincarnation. She tried to explain to me that Buddhism had nothing to do with mysticism but was an attempt to stop the suffering that came from birth, illness, old age, and death, or even the mental suffering incurred by the presence of a hated person or the absence of a loved one. And the way to stop the suffering was to try to become detached and free and thus to attain Nirvana, which was the end of the cycle of rebirths. “Is it really possible to stop the cycle of rebirths?” I inquired with an inner smile, in Hindu irony, and as I asked, Einat returned from the toilet supported by the Japanese girl, who was carefully carrying the two little receptacles, which contained a faintly pink fluid, the color of the tea I had just been drinking. And although my heart froze for a moment at the obviously pathological appearance of the urine, which suggested the presence of blood, I said nothing and betrayed no sign of anxiety. On the contrary, I congratulated Einat on the success of her efforts and took the two little containers and placed them with the test tubes of blood in a padded leather pouch which could be fastened to someone’s belt for safe conveyance during a trip. Good for our head pharmacist, I thought admiringly; I mustn’t forget to praise him for his foresight and ingenuity when I get back. I went on talking to the Japanese girl about the Buddha and his followers, drinking my third cup of tea while Einat dozed in the fetal position, as if the loud cry she had previously produced had calmed her. I was beginning to feel astonished at the procrastination of her parents, and thinking angrily of Lazar’s wife, who even at this difficult hour was no doubt looking for somewhere original to stay.
They finally returned, agitated but also proud of their achievements. Suddenly the room filled with a number of half-naked young Indians, who before our eyes put together two stretchers from bamboo poles and mats, like the ones on which dead bodies were transported to the river. One of them was quickly loaded with our luggage, while the sick girl was carefully lifted onto the other and covered with a floral cloth. In a soft, beautiful twilight hour, our little procession left the Thai monastery with two stretchers held shoulder-high and made its way through the tree-shaded streets of Bodhgaya, passing shacks made of cloth and wood, under the sympathetic gaze of locals and pilgrims. Our destination was a hotel not far from the local river, surrounded by lawns and flower beds, where the Lazars had found a bungalow consisting of three small rooms connected by a passage and a rather dirty kitchenette with a sink and a stove in one corner and a table in the middle, which someone had already heaped with fruit and vegetables, cheeses and chapatis in anticipation of our arrival. For a moment I stood amazed at the transformation of my simple request for a decent room into this massive domestication. Before even asking about the results of the examination I had carried out on their daughter in their absence, both the Lazars burst into a frenzy of organization. Einat was put to bed between clean white sheets in a little room of her own, and Lazar’s wife fussed over her and pampered her and went to fetch a vase of fresh flowers from the hotel manager, while Lazar himself attacked the clutter and disorder with a vengeance, opening the suitcases and putting the clothes away in the closets as if he had forgotten all about his hospital and his promise to conclude the trip in ten or twelve days. It was as if all he wanted was to settle down in this little bungalow in the charming Buddhist village, which in comparison to the Indian reality we had seen up to now was a veritable paradise on earth.
But I still hadn’t opened my suitcase, only put it on the bed in the little room set aside for me. I was uneasy, not only because of the color of Einat’s urine, and the blood, which at first sight looked diseased and saturated with bilirubin, or the enlarged gall bladder, which had made her scream with pain when I touched it, but mainly because of my failure to palpate the liver, as if it had shrunk or degenerated in an alarmingly accelerated process of cell destruction. In which case, I thought, there was a good chance that before long she might develop a sudden internal hemorrhage. The thought terrified me, because if that happened here, in this remote village, all we would be able to do was pray to Buddha. As Lazar stood in the doorway with a strange-looking apron tied around his waist and invited me to come into the kitchen, I pulled myself together and decided to return immediately to Gaya and hand the samples over to the hospital laboratory and at the same time have a look at their equipment, so I would know what would be available to us if we needed it. If, as I feared, the results were bad, it would make no sense to settle down in this funny little bungalow with its dirty little kitchen and big dining table — we should go straight to Calcutta and take her to the hospital recommended by the Indian doctor on the train, so I wouldn’t have to cope with any possible deterioration on my own. Strangely enough, the Lazars did not seem worried; perhaps they had expected to find her in worse condition, or perhaps they had put their faith in Hishin’s pronouncement that in the last analysis hepatitis was a self-limited disease, and accordingly, after collecting their daughter and transferring her to the bungalow, all they sought was rest. The holy village too appeared to have had a calming effect on them, and they seemed perfectly happy to putter about in their little kitchen with its knives and forks and plates and even a pot bubbling on the stove.
I decided to sow a few seeds of anxiety in the cozy domesticity that was taking over here, and, declining to sit down at the laid table, I announced without undue gravity that I felt obliged to go straight to the hospital at Gaya with the samples I had obtained. I placed the ointment to relieve Einat’s incessant itch on the table, between the fruit and the chapatis, and also a few Valium tablets and paracetamol to bring down her temperature, and warned the Lazars not to mask her symptoms by exaggerating the dosage. But I wasn’t sure that I had conveyed my anxiety to them, for Lazar greeted my announcement with astonishment. “Are you sure that it’s really necessary to go to the hospital now, in the dark?”