The flight was indeed full, just as my rickshaw driver had warned me, but after I had repeatedly explained to the clerks at the airport that I was an English doctor who needed to take urgent medical tests to a laboratory in Calcutta — I even displayed the blood and urine samples as evidence — they agreed to provide me with a little folding seat at the back of the plane, apparently meant for the attendants, whom I paid for the ticket, which seemed very cheap. I gave the rickshaw driver a few rupees and a note to take to the Lazars in Bodhgaya, in which I outlined my plans to take the samples to Calcutta and return the next day, by train or plane, with reliable results. Don’t worry, I concluded ironically, I’ll come back from hell too — you know that I don’t get lost. I added quotation marks to the word “hell,” to show that I was quoting Lazar but also to alleviate my own anxiety, and signed “Yours, Benjamin.” It was almost midnight. I took one of the three large sandwiches Lazar’s wife had prepared out of my knapsack and ate it with relish, and I thought about the two of them and how compatible they were. Even their attitude toward their daughter was the same: a strange, detached compassion, and something like fear of her as well. Would Lazar’s wife also have called Calcutta hell? And what did Lazar know about hell? He must know sinister places in his hospital, like the morgue. Let’s say that Calcutta was hell — the doctor and his brother whom we had met in the train looked perfectly cheerful, and they lived there. And even if the poverty and suffering were worse than anything we had seen up to now, so much the better. On my return to Bodhgaya I would have a certain advantage over the Lazars, which would establish my authority as a doctor if the dire circumstances I feared arose. They were too sure of themselves; the deep bond between them made them smug. And when, after midnight, the propellers turned and the plane took off with an ease that was surprising in view of its age, I saw the takeoff as a sign of the Tightness of my decision and fell asleep at once.
I dreamed that I returned to the bungalow, which was no longer in Bodhgaya but in some other town, still in the east but not in India. The kitchen was much larger than in reality, and the wooden table had given way to the glass table in the Lazars’ living room in Tel Aviv, with other furniture from their apartment too, and also furniture from my parents’ place in Jerusalem. The motorcycle I had left in my parents’ yard stood covered up next to the sink. Only my patient was missing. The Lazars were both sitting sadly at the dining room table, waiting for me to return from Calcutta with the results of the tests, and I suddenly realized that I was very late, and that instead of returning the next day, as I had promised in my note, I had returned after a few weeks, perhaps even months. But they were still waiting for me, faithful to the promise they had given my parents to look after me. Where’s my patient? I asked in boundless distress, and they looked at each other, and Lazar remained seated. His wife stood up and led me to the corner, where a strange little girl was lying wrapped in a gray sheet. He’s arrived, her mother whispered.
With the first signs of light the plane began the descent to fog-enshrouded Calcutta, where solitary lights glittered. The city looked like a huge ancient factory where work had stopped but which still had a cloud of smog hanging over it. Although it was very early in the morning, aimless crowds were already milling around, and the people looked as if they were floating, as if the law of gravity had been abolished here. The thought flashed through my mind that if I wanted a sign that I had indeed descended to the lowest rung of human suffering, this was it. In New Delhi or Varanasi even the beggars and cripples had some kind of direction, but here all direction had been lost, and people were milling around together in a vortex into which I too was soon swept, unable to find my way out. Naked beggars clung to me, leprous and limbless, and it was impossible to shake them off. I was thirsty and tired from the flight, but I vacillated between having something to drink here, in the heart of the commotion, next to maimed and dying people lying next to the walls, and waiting until I reached the city itself. In the end my thirst won and I went over to one of the stalls and asked for tea with milk, the way my English mother made it. I chose two postcards with stamps already printed on them, and took another one of the sandwiches prepared by Lazar’s wife out of my knapsack and ate it standing up while I scribbled a few affectionate words to my parents in my small, neat handwriting, telling them why I was in Calcutta. The stall-keeper showed me where to find the mailbox, which was red and big and very British, inspiring me with confidence that the letter I dropped into it would indeed reach its destination. The other postcard I put away in my pocket, and feeling somewhat recovered, I extricated myself from the human swarm. Without hesitating I chose not a rickshaw but a proper cab, which took me straight to the laboratory whose address was printed on the card.
The dream I had had on the plane disturbed me but also served me a warning: I must not get lost here. My purpose was to ascertain the liver functions, the two transaminases, the clotting factors, and the glucose levels. I had full confidence in the Indian doctor and his brother. They were connected with the University of Calcutta. But when the cabdriver dropped me outside a regular apartment building in a little alley, without any sign of a medical laboratory, my spirits fell, and I would not release the cabbie until he led me to the doctor’s door. To my surprise, the shabby apartment building, which was only a few stories high, possessed a little elevator, but it was impossible to tell if it was working, for there were a number of people sleeping in it, huddled together like a tangle of black snakes. At this early hour the stairwell too was full of sleeping people. The cabbie immediately removed his sandals and stepped over them barefoot, and I too took off my shoes and tried to glide over them in my socks. In that way we reached my doctor’s flat, where we found a card like the one in my pocket pinned to the door. The cabbie was not content with leading me to the door but went inside to drag the doctor out of bed. The doctor, with only a narrow loincloth on his smooth, slender body, which looked like that of a boy, was not at all surprised to see me standing before him. He cried joyfully, “All the time I’ve been saying to my brother, Dr. Benjamin will have to come to us in the end if he wants to know the truth. But who would have believed that he would come so early?” He laughed and ushered me into a big, dim room full of carpets and ornaments, where two little girls were sleeping on the couch. He removed them quickly to the next room and returned after a few minutes in a pale European suit. He immediately took the samples from me, listened attentively to what I had to say about my patient’s condition and my suspicions, and in a clear firm hand wrote down the particulars of the tests I wanted performed, with which he appeared to be thoroughly familiar. Nothing seemed to him either impossible or superfluous. Finally he stood up and said, “Give me half a day and my brother and I will have all the results ready for you. If you don’t make the afternoon flight, you can always take the five o’clock train, which reaches Gaya at dawn.” He then spread a thin, colorful rug on the couch where the little girls had been sleeping, beat the cushions lightly, and turned them around. He scattered a few joss sticks in an ashy incense bowl, lit them to banish the smells of the night, and said, “You can rest here and even sleep, and return tonight refreshed to the patient for whose sake you came all the way to Calcutta.”