My face turned red and I immediately sat up in the armchair. She would never be able to guess, not even in her wildest dreams … All she did was apologize, and apologize again. She hadn’t thought that I would still be sitting next to Einat, who for some reason woke up as soon as her mother entered the room, assumed a suffering expression, and began voraciously scratching herself again. When I told Lazar’s wife about Einat’s long sleep, she looked worried and asked me to examine her again. I therefore went to fetch my stethoscope and sphygmomanometer, and palpated Einat’s flat stomach, trying to feel the damaged liver. There did not seem to be any change for the worse; the kidneys still seemed somewhat enlarged, but I decided against intervening at this stage with any additional medication, and left them after agreeing to come back to the room later for dinner. Outside it was raining, and the display windows of the European shops which had taken the place of the Indian temples gleamed with colored lights. I walked along the sidewalks, getting wet, amazed at my sudden new feeling for this impossible older woman. It’s completely idiotic, I scolded myself, but nevertheless I soon retraced my steps and returned to the hotel, went up to my room to shower, put on the shirt I had washed in Bodhgaya, and joined the two women for an excellent Italian meal. In spite of my excitement, I tried to joke with Einat, whose deep sleep had brought a fresh, rosy color to her cheeks. Her mother laughed a lot all evening, and when the phone rang and Lazar announced his safe arrival, she sounded loving and tender and not at all angry. She asked him about the flight and assured him that all was well with us. They spoke for a long time, as if they weren’t going to meet again in less than twenty-four hours. I looked at her legs, which for most of the trip had been hidden by slacks. They were youthful and very shapely, but the overflowing belly and full arms spoiled her appearance. Nevertheless my excitement persisted, not without the accompaniment of an inner nervousness, and I stayed with them longer than they expected me to.
In the middle of the night I woke up, opened the closet, stood in front of the mirror, and examined my reflection in the dark. I suddenly whispered her name, Dori, Dori, as if by the mere act of whispering her name I was exorcising her or secretly taking possession of her. This is too weird, this is insane, I chided myself. The room was heated to boiling point, and in spite of the high ceiling I felt stifled. I got dressed and went downstairs to see if I could get a glass of milk. But it was two o’clock in the morning, and the hotel bar was still and silent. Even the reception clerk — perhaps the same one who had helped me to break into the Lazars’ room that afternoon — was asleep on a bed hidden behind the desk. I wandered around the big, dark dining room, where the tables were already laid for breakfast, and before going back upstairs I opened the door into the kitchen, as I was in the habit of doing when I was on call in the hospital at night, in the hope of finding something there. And indeed, the big kitchen was not in total darkness. In its recesses a faint light flickered redly on great copper saucepans, and I heard low laughter. I advanced past the neat tables and gleaming sinks. Next to a big dining table I saw three people sitting and talking in a foreign language, not Italian, eating soup from pottery bowls decorated with pink flowers. They were foreign workers, perhaps refugees. One of them immediately rose from his seat and asked me what I wanted, in Italian and with a friendly expression on his face. “Milk,” I said in English, and I laid a heavy hand on my stomach, to signal the burning pain of my sudden fall into love, while with my other hand I raised an imaginary glass to my lips and drank it to the dregs. He understood at once, repeated my request to his guests in their language, and went to the refrigerator to pour me a glass of milk. Then I saw that next to the giant fridge, whose motor was humming like a small plane’s, sat a little girl with a waiflike appearance, looking at the screen of a small television set. And next to her a thin bespectacled man with a very sickly appearance sat paging through a school workbook.
Part Two. Marriage
Six
Lazar received special permission, apparently on medical grounds, to meet us in the arrival lounge immediately after passport control. Even before his wife and daughter noticed him, I saw his stocky, broad-shouldered figure in a wet raincoat standing next to the guard at the end of the barrier, anxiously inspecting the people walking past him as if he really doubted our ability to get home without him. Next to him, his long hair soaking wet and a distracted expression on his face, which resembled his father’s, stood Lazar’s son, whom his mother hurried to gather lovingly to her bosom, as if he were the dangerously ill child who had to be brought back home. But Lazar had no intention of allowing anyone to waste time on hugs and kisses. He handed his son a big black umbrella and instructed him to lead his sister, draped in a raincoat, straight to the car, while he himself hurried to seize an empty cart and began to collect the luggage. “Wait till you see the storm raging outside — you’ll wish you were back in India,” he warned us. “Was it really necessary for you to get back in such a hurry?” his wife asked him, her tone still showing vestiges of her anger at having been left alone for twenty-four hours. “Not only necessary but essential,” he replied with a triumphant smile, and when he saw me looking at him somberly, he reassured me cheerfully, “Don’t worry, your parents are here too, waiting for you outside.”
“My parents?” I was astonished. “What on earth for?” Lazar seemed taken aback. “What for? I don’t know — so that you won’t have to go home by yourself in the rain, I suppose. My secretary got hold of them on the phone this morning, and they promised to be here to take you back to Jerusalem.” But I didn’t want to go to Jerusalem now, even though I had left my Honda there; I wanted to remain in Tel Aviv so as to report back to the hospital at the crack of dawn. Lazar had kept his promise; the whole trip had lasted only two weeks, and here, next to the luggage conveyor turning emptily on its axis, the length of our absence shrank to its natural proportions. Nevertheless, I was afraid that significant changes to my disadvantage had taken place in the meantime. “Did you have time to tell Hishin about what happened?” I asked, dying to know if Hishin had already been told about the blood transfusion I had performed in Varanasi. “No,” said Lazar, with his arm around his wife’s shoulder, as if he still had to appease her. “Hishin’s not here, he took off for Paris a few days ago. That’s why he didn’t want to come with us himself. He kept the real reason from us. Never mind, we managed very well without him.” He smiled at us complacently, as if the medical responsibility had been shared equally among the three of us. He seemed elated now. The meeting with the group of donors had been a success. I saw that underneath his raincoat he was elegantly dressed in a suit and tie. His wife started to fawn on him, the abandonment of yesterday suddenly forgiven. I looked at her and found myself blushing. She looked tired but happy to be back home. Had I really fallen a little bit in love with her, I wondered, or was it all some strange hallucination?