As illuminated launches sailed past us and our little boat rocked in their wake, I began thinking affectionately of Einat too. How sad for it to end like this, a trip that perhaps was intended to be more than just a trip, a little rebellion or an escape. And in bringing me along, hadn’t Lazar and his wife had some hidden intention to put her in touch with a young doctor, an “ideal man”? She was only four years younger than I was, but she seemed a little bit of a lost soul; why hadn’t she even finished her B.A.? The oarsman called out to me to look at the ghats we were passing. Sensitively he had noticed that I was preoccupied with irrelevant thoughts. I smiled my thanks and raised my eyes to the brown stone temples. Vishvanath, I said softly, getting the name right this time, Vishvanath, and the oarsman’s face lit up and he immediately put his hands together in a gesture of acknowledgment. But the magic had somehow been dispelled, and at the end of the tour of the ghats, when we returned to the bank, I did not linger but hurried back to the hotel, stopping on the way at a small telephone booth, next to which a number of backpackers were clustered. To my surprise I got through right away to my parents, who were overjoyed to be awakened from their sleep by the sound of my voice. We’re already on our way back, I announced, and everything’s going well. And I told them briefly about the day’s events.
Outside the door to our rooms I heard loud voices, and when I entered I found the two parents sitting on the purple wicker chairs and arguing with my patient, who was sitting up in bed, very yellow and scratching but wide awake. Lazar was in high spirits, having succeeded after strenuous efforts in getting four tickets on the plane to New Delhi the next night. He still hoped to be able to change the flight from New Delhi to Rome that we had missed because of the stop in Varanasi for one the day after, so that we would be in time for the El Al flight home on Friday. I had finally learned the reason for his haste. He had an important meeting with a delegation of big donors from abroad, whom he had persuaded to devote their Sunday morning to our hospital. “You wanted a twenty-four-hour recovery period, and now you’ve got thirty hours until the flight,” he said aggressively, as if the recovery were meant for me instead of his daughter. But I only smiled. His face was very gray, his little eyes were sunken, and if I had been as close to him as Hishin was, I would have hospitalized him for a few days in the internal medicine department for a comprehensive checkup. But his wife was apparently used to the grayish hue of his face, as were the many doctors with whom he came into daily contact. It was still early for bed, and for a moment I was loath to part from them; I didn’t know if they intended to move the patient into my room, or if Lazar intended to move in with me for the night. In the end Lazar asked me to help him move one of the beds from my room into theirs. What did you think, I said to myself with an inner smile, that his wife would agree to spend a night without him?
At eight the next evening we arrived in New Delhi, where Lazar was in for a bitter disappointment. There was only one seat left on the Thursday morning flight to Rome. And flying home via some other European city would mean forfeiting the tickets, which had cost a lot of money. “Why don’t you take the available seat and fly back alone?” I asked Lazar, who seemed plunged in despair. “The three of us could fly to Rome on Friday and get a flight home on Sunday or Monday.” He looked at me but didn’t react, and then he glanced at his wife, whose eyes were fixed anxiously on his face, with no trace of her usual smile. “That’s impossible,” he blurted out in the end, exchanging another glance with his wife, who stared at me tensely, ready to reject any additional suggestions. So we had no option but to ride into New Delhi, which after Varanasi, Calcutta, and Gaya looked like a normal, civilized city. With uncharacteristic absent-mindedness, the Lazars let the rickshaw driver take us to a big modern hotel, with large and apparently very expensive rooms. And once again the three of them had to crowd into one room, while I was sent to the floor above, to a room that was not large but very pleasant and grand in its own way. For the first time on the journey, I felt the kind of mild, vague guilt toward them that I sometimes feel toward my parents when I think that they are doing without on my account. Accordingly, I went downstairs and knocked on their door, and despite the lateness of the hour and the disorder of the room, they welcomed me in like a member of the family and listened in surprise to my offer to look after our patient the next day by myself, so that they could take advantage of our enforced stay in New Delhi and go on a tour to Agra, 125 miles away, to see the Taj Mahal. “How will you face your friends if you come back from India without having seen the Taj Mahal?” I said with a smile, and offered to let them take my camera with them. “And how will you?” laughed his wife, whose hostility toward me had vanished without a trace. “I’m still young,” I said tactlessly. “I’ll return here one day.” To my surprise they accepted my offer, as if they were entitled to some form of compensation from me, and early in the morning they set out in a tour bus to see the mausoleum built by the Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, while I spent most of the day with Einat, sitting in the armchair or lying on her parents’ bed and trying to read A Brief History of Time, although I didn’t understand much. The blood transfusion I had given her turned out to have been vital; for one thing, the sudden nosebleeds had completely ceased. However, she was still febrile and exhausted by the relentless itching caused by the accumulated bile salts. She hadn’t slept properly for weeks, and she kept dozing off as I changed the dressing on the wound on her leg, which looked much better. When she roused from her sleep, I showered her with questions, first about her trip to India, and then about her experiences in the hospital in Gaya, which she answered briefly but frankly. In the boredom of the lengthening hours, I began questioning her about things unconnected with her illness — first about her traveling companions, especially the shaven-headed Michaela, with the huge light eyes, who had brought the news of her illness to her parents, and then, as if I were about to become her family doctor, I began slipping in little questions about the family, asking about her younger brother and her charming grandmother. Then I questioned her eagerly about her parents, of whom she was obviously not too fond, and asked whether there was any truth in the strange complaint her father had made to me, that his wife was incapable of staying by herself.