“You may be right,” they replied politely, “but don’t forget to tell her about the vaccinations anyhow.” It was then I sensed the first shadow falling on the happiness that had just begun to awaken in me. I had been imagining a vigorous, perhaps even rather adventurous expedition undertaken by two men, who in spite of an age difference of twenty years might still be able to enjoy the kind of fine friendship that grows up in a small army reserve unit. But if Lazar’s wife was going to tag along, I reflected in concern, mightn’t the whole thing turn into a tedious, leaden trip with a couple of middle-aged parents?
But could I still back out? I wondered, sitting late that morning opposite a bank clerk and waiting for the foreign currency, my now valid passport in the slim, strong hands of Hannah, who had spent the morning leading me efficiently from office to office and organizing everything for me as if I suffered from some kind of handicap. Why on earth was Lazar’s wife going? Was it really out of concern for her daughter’s health, or did the situation require the strengthening of a parental delegation for some reason? I still hoped that Mrs. Lazar would decide not to go at the last minute. I didn’t like her constant concern and warm smiles. She could only be a drag on the speed and ease of our travels, I thought as I parted with her office clerk, taking back my passport and rejecting, with some mortification, her offer to accompany me to the Health Service to receive the necessary vaccinations, and perhaps to pay for them too.
I mounted my Honda and rode to the place, where I found the door of the vaccination room sealed shut because of a nurses’ strike. As I wandered around the corridor looking for a solution, I was recognized by an old friend from medical school, who had dropped out in his fourth year because of an involvement with a girl he later married and who was now working here as the medical secretary of the district physician. He bounded gleefully toward me, and when he heard about the trip to India, he was very much in favor of it. I told him that I would be paid a fee on top of my travel expenses, and he became so excited that he slapped me on the back in congratulations and said with undisguised envy, “You’re a clever bastard, a quiet, clever bastard. And you’re a lucky bastard too — you always have been. What wouldn’t I give to change places with you?” Immediately, he rushed off to find the key, ushered me into the nurses’ room, opened a big glass cupboard, pointed at the rows of rainbow-colored vaccine bottles, and said jokingly, “Our bar is at your service, sir. You can be vaccinated here against any disease you like, the weirdest and most wonderful diseases you ever heard of.” And while I studied the exotic labels on the little bottles, he took a sterile syringe out of a drawer and offered to inject me himself; he was two-thirds a doctor, after all. “You’re not afraid of me?” he cried with incomprehensible hilarity, waving the syringe in his hand. But I suddenly drew back; the empty room filled me with an inexplicable anxiety, as if I missed the reassuring presence of reliable nurses, whose quiet and careful movements always calmed me. “No,” I said, “you’ll only hurt me. Give me the syringes and I’ll find someone to do it for me at the hospital. Just stamp the certificate.” And he gave in unwillingly. He found a yellow vaccination certificate, stamped it, and began dragging out a long, boring conversation, trying to recall the names of erstwhile fellow-students, wallowing in nostalgia for his wasted student days, inviting me to go and have a cup of coffee. When we got to the dreary little cafeteria and sat among the indolent government clerks, next to a big window which raindrops were beginning to streak, I thought about the exhausting day ahead of me and how I was going to find time to say good-bye to my parents. I listened absent-mindedly, with uncharacteristic passivity, to my companion justifying his academic failures with all kinds of tortuous arguments and complaining about the unfairness of his teachers. Finally I pulled myself together, cut the conversation short, and stood up, saying, “Listen, I really have to run. Let’s go back to your ‘bar’ for a minute.” We returned to the vaccination room, where I opened the cupboard myself and collected additional bottles of vaccine against cholera and malaria and also against hepatitis. I added a few syringes in sterile wrappings and asked my companions to stamp two more vaccination certificates without filling in the names. He agreed generously to all my requests, but in the end he couldn’t resist saying somewhat sourly, “I see the travel bug has really bitten you hard.”
Indeed, I was already burning with travel fever, a dull, somewhat sullen fever, and when I reached the hospital on my motorcycle, wet from the rain, I felt alienated from the place that I had served so lovingly and faithfully for the past year. In spite of the nurses’ strike, which had been declared that morning, everything seemed to be functioning normally, and I hurried to the ward only to find no doctors present — just the usual shift of nurses, who seemed surprised to see me. “You?” They giggled archly. “Hishin’s been telling everybody that you’re already winging your way to India.” I put on my white coat, with the name “Benjamin Rubin” embroidered in red on the pocket, and went to look for Hishin, but he, it appeared, had been urgently summoned to the operating room. The young woman he had operated on the day before had developed complications. My first impulse was to hurry there after him, but I knew that the other resident, my rival-friend, would be there too and I might have to face rejection or be painfully ignored again before saying good-bye. Accordingly, I decided to let it go and to pay a little private visit to the patients in the ward instead. However, the senior nurse, a noble-spirited woman of about sixty, who was sitting in her corner dressed in ordinary clothes in order to express her solidarity with the strike without actually striking herself, stood up and stopped me: “What do you need to make rounds for, Dr. Rubin? You’ve got a long, difficult journey — you should go home and get ready. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything for you here.” What she said made sense, and I was so touched by her sympathetic tone that I couldn’t resist putting my arm around her and giving her a little hug before I slipped off my coat. Without another word, I took two little bottles of vaccine out of my pocket and asked her to give me the shots, which she did with such a light touch that I didn’t even feel the prick. I threw my coat in the laundry bin and set off for administration to look for Lazar. In the office the girls recognized me immediately, even without my coat, and greeted me in a friendly, respectful manner, saying, “Here’s Dr. Rubin, the volunteer doctor.” They called the head secretary, Miss Kolby, who said that Lazar had phoned a number of times from Jerusalem to ask about me. “He’s still in the Foreign Office, looking for India experts?” I exclaimed in surprise. But it turned out that he was in the Treasury, not about the trip to India, but about the nurses’ strike. However, he had still found time to instruct the head pharmacist of the hospital to put together a kit with the appropriate medical equipment, and also to remind Hishin to prepare a medical brief for me. In the meantime his wife’s office had left the message that my ticket was ready. So there was nothing to worry about. “Is his wife really coming with us?” I asked the secretary in a tone of annoyance, and I saw her hesitate, as if taking refuge in uncertainty, perhaps for fear of antagonizing me and giving rise to some new resistance. For a moment it crossed my mind that because of the nurses’ strike Lazar might have to stay behind, and his wife was getting ready to go in his place, and instead of having a male traveling companion I would have to negotiate the complicated routes of India with two women, one of them middle-aged and the other very sick.