I ordered the secretary to get my mother on the phone, so that I could prepare her for the possibility that I might not be able to get there before evening. My mother, who thought that I was already on my way to Jerusalem, was not upset but instead tried to calm me down. “Never mind, Benjy, don’t worry; you’ll sleep at home tonight, and we’ll drive you to the airport tomorrow. I’ve already told your father to take a day off.”
Now I was impatient. I had already agreed to travel to a completely foreign and remote world the next day — so why was I still hanging around the hospital, which suddenly seemed gloomy and stifling? I hurried to the surgical ward to look for Hishin and get the article about hepatitis from him, but since I wasn’t wearing my coat the new guard outside the entrance failed to recognize me and refused to let me in. On a bench in the corridor I again saw the two relatives of the young woman who had been operated on the day before. They recognized me but for some reason ignored me, as if they too had already realized how weak my position was here and how false my promise about the patient’s rebirth had been. I wanted to go up to them and ask them how she was, but I stopped myself. In the space of one day I had become superfluous here. I decided not to wait and made my way to the office of the head pharmacist, Dr. Hessing, a bald old German Jew, who immediately dropped everything and led me into one of the cubicles in the depths of the storage area, where he showed me a large knapsack. He immediately opened it to display the wealth and variety of the medical equipment it contained and the snugness and efficiency with which it had all been packed — drugs, ampules and syringes, thermometer and sphygmomanometer, stethoscope and test tubes, scissors and little scalpels, and of course infusion sets; like an entire miniature hospital. Maybe the pharmacist had been so generous because his budget depended more than that of any other department of the hospital on the personal whims of the administrative director. But at the sight of the overflowing knapsack, my spirits fell. “Why do I have to drag all this with me?” I protested. “I’m not going on a climbing expedition to the Himalayas.” I demanded that he take out some of the equipment, but he stubbornly refused to remove a single item from the kit, which he had evidently prepared with loving care. “Take it,” he coaxed me. “Don’t be foolish, who knows what you might need there. You’re going to one of the filthiest places in the world, and if you decide you don’t need something once you’re there, you can always give it away.”
And so, carrying the knapsack, I returned to the surgical ward to look once more for Hishin. To my surprise, the operation was still going on. Something’s gone wrong there, I thought to myself, trying not to meet the eyes of the woman’s relatives, who were still sitting on their bench in the growing darkness, rigid with anxiety. Now nobody stopped me at the entrance to the ward, and with the knapsack on my back I stood outside the big door of the operating room, in exactly the same spot where Lazar had stood waving his hand, and through the same porthole I saw the same team as the day before; only I was missing. The other resident’s back was bent in a tense and supple arch next to Professor Hishin, who I guessed by his movements was struggling to solve a serious problem deep in the woman’s guts. All I could make out from the porthole was her delicate white feet, shining out from under the sheet at the end of the table. Nobody noticed me, apart from Dr. Nakash, who hurriedly whispered something to Hishin. Hishin immediately raised his eyes and waved, and a few minutes later he came out to me, the scalpel in his hand, his gown covered with bloodstains, looking tired and upset. Before I could open my mouth, he silenced me and said in his ironic Hungarian accent, “Yes, yes, forgive me, I know I’m keeping you waiting, but you can see for yourself, I’m not taking part in an orgy here.” And I knew immediately that for the past hour he had been battling against death itself, because whenever he felt death near he would refer in one way or another to sex. I felt a pang because I was not participating in the dramatic battle taking place on the operating table, not even as an onlooker. “What’s going on in there?” I asked accusingly. “Why did you have to operate on her again?” But Hishin waved his bloody hand in my face, refusing to talk about the operation, and with unaccountable emotion he put his arm around me and hugged me and said, “Never mind, don’t worry about it. Just some stubborn woman who keeps on hemorrhaging from unexpected places. But you stop worrying, you have to keep your head clear for the journey. You have no idea how grateful Lazar is to me on your account. They’ve fallen in love with you already, him and his wife. So what do you need now? Ah, you want to know what to do about our hepatitis? As a matter of fact, nothing. Yes, yes, sorry, I forgot to bring the article. But it doesn’t matter. I see you’ve already been given equipment and drugs. And the truth is, there isn’t much to be done in these cases. Just reassure them all psychologically. Everything’s psychological nowadays, isn’t that what everyone says? Soon we’ll be able to do without surgery too. So don’t worry, you won’t have much to do. I told you, hepatitis is a self-limited disease.”
When I left the hospital, I looked up at the sky to see what to expect on the way to Jerusalem and whether I should take my Honda. How had I got mixed up in this crazy journey? Suddenly I wanted to hurry home to my parents, so that they could cosset me with warmth and concern and help me to get ready for the trip, which I now felt approaching at a gallop. At my small apartment I quickly washed the dishes in the sink, made the bed, and packed clothes, underwear, socks, and toiletries in a sturdy old suitcase. I disconnected the electricity, shut the water, and phoned my landlady to tell her I was going abroad. Then I tied the suitcase and the knapsack onto the pillion of the Honda and drove to the Lazars’ apartment to arrange for our meeting at the airport and to get my ticket, as well as the dollars that had been withdrawn from the bank in my name but had been pocketed by Mrs. Lazar’s little clerk. In the spacious apartment, now glowing with the rosy light of sunset, the preparations for the journey were evident: a suitcase lay next to the door, and by its side was an open bag. “Here you are at last,” cried Lazar from the living room. “We’ve been asking ourselves where you disappeared to!”
“I disappeared?” I asked, insulted. “In what sense did I disappear?”
“Never mind, never mind,” said his wife, emerging immediately from the living room in a velvet jump suit. I could already see that she had an overpowering desire to be present everywhere, and she looked different to me, maybe younger but also uglier, short and thick, her hair a little rumpled, her face pale, and the radiant smile in her eyes faded behind the lenses of her glasses. “Don’t pay any attention,” she said. “Lazar’s always worrying, he thrives on worry, you’ll have to get used to it, but come in Dr….” She paused then, uncertain of how to address me. “Call me Benjamin, or Benjy, if you like.”