It was one o’clock, and Lazar’s wife, whom he called Dori, announced with a gleam in her eye that before anything else we had to find a good restaurant. But although I too was very hungry I decided that if I didn’t set limits right away, I would soon begin to find the pressure unbearable. I therefore informed them that I preferred to do without lunch at the moment and would wander around by myself instead, slightly stressing the words “by myself.” They were taken aback. “Aren’t you hungry?” asked Lazar with fatherly concern. “That’s not the point,” I an swered frankly. “I just don’t want to waste any time. I’ve never been in Rome before, and I want to look around a bit on my own.” Again I gently stressed the words “on my own.” His wife’s automatic smile suddenly vanished. Her face grew grave, and she touched her husband’s sleeve lightly, as if to warn him. But Lazar didn’t feel her touch. “Just a minute,” he cried in alarm. “Where do you want to go, and where will we meet?”
“Where will we meet?” I thought aloud. “At the airport, of course. I’ve got my ticket, and if you’ll be so good as to give me back my passport and the claim checks for my suitcase and knapsack, I’ll go straight to the airport in time for the flight.” Lazar was still upset by this sudden independent plan. “Just a minute,” he cried, “where in the airport? And why the airport? You saw how complicated it is there. Perhaps we should meet somewhere in town, at least, so we don’t lose each other just before the flight.” But his wife, who had grasped my clear intention of drawing a definite line between us, hastened to reassure him. “It’s perfectly all right. Why not? We’ll meet when we board the plane. What’s the problem?” And he was obliged to take my passport as well as the checks for my suitcase and the medical knapsack out of his pocket, asking as he unwillingly did so, “But where do you want to go in Rome? In what direction?”
“I don’t have a direction, I don’t know yet,” I replied, careful not to mention any specific place in case they found a way to join me after all. And then I saw a flicker of offense in his eyes, but he suppressed it immediately, and confined himself to asking me if I had enough money. “No, I’ve got hardly any money,” I answered quickly, and directed a look of silent rebuke at his wife. “The girl from the office withdrew my foreign currency from the bank yesterday, but then she took it with her.” Mrs. Lazar blushed. Lazar took her purse from her and rummaged in it for the envelope with the money. He counted the bills, reflected, and gave me half, two hundred dollars, and then changed his mind and added another hundred, saying, “You see, it’s a good thing I asked you. But I don’t understand,” he said, confronting his wife, “why she didn’t give him the money, and how come you didn’t notice it was there. Didn’t you even look in the envelope she gave you?” But before she could reply he dismissed it with an impatient “Never mind, never mind,” and turned to me. “Let’s not waste any more time. But you see, it’s a good thing that I’m something of a worrier, otherwise you would have gone off without any money, and if you got lost we would all be in a real mess. And from now on, please don’t be shy with us, tell us if anything’s bothering you or if you need anything, and that way there won’t be any misunderstandings. Now, where are you thinking of going?” He seemed determined to get it out of me, and I said without thinking, “Since I’m here, I may as well pay a short visit to the Vatican,” and the two of them chorused in evident relief, “An excellent idea.”
And I, bound by my promise, set out to look for the Vatican, even though I knew that we would see plenty of holy places in India, and according to Lazar the town of Gaya itself was full of ancient temples. But at least I would have something in my recent memory to compare with all that, I thought to myself, maybe even a subject to talk to them about. As soon as I got off the bus at St. Peter’s Square, I found a mobile pizza stand and bought two hot little pizzas and ate them standing up, taking shelter from the raindrops under a convenient awning. In spite of the gray light, I wanted a photograph of myself against the background of the famous gray dome. I noticed a group of elderly tourists nearby, standing under a canopy of umbrellas and listening to the explanations of a tour guide who was wrapped up tight in a raincoat. Judging by their unperturbed attitude to the rain, and also by the battered felt hat — like my father’s — which one of them wore, I guessed that they were English, and I was drawn to them. I took advantage of a momentary pause in the guide’s lecture and asked one of the women, whose gray head was wrapped in a big woolen scarf, to take a photo of me in front of the dome in two different poses. After she returned the camera, she explained that they were a group of pensioners from England on a European tour, as I had guessed, and for most of them it was their first time abroad. When I told her that I was flying to India that very evening, to a remote town in the east of the subcontinent, to bring a sick young woman home to Israel, her eyes lit up with curiosity, and for a moment she didn’t want to let me go. At first I thought that it was the idea of my imminent flight to India which appealed to her, but it quickly transpired that it was the idea of a young doctor flying to the ends of the earth to heal a sick person that caused her excitement. She called her friends to tell them about me and my rescue mission, and one of the old men immediately stepped forward to say that he had served in India himself and was very willing to tell us all about it. The young Italian guide, too, nodded at me affectionately and invited me to join the group for the rest of their tour of the Vatican, and although I was afraid that joining this geriatric group would eat up the few hours I had to spare until the flight — for I had already noted the extreme slowness of their pace — I thought it might force me to take Hishin’s advice and split off from the Lazars on the way back from India, in order to spend a day or two sightseeing in Rome. And this way I’d have at least finished the Vatican. Which was, indeed, exactly what I felt when I parted from the English pensioners in the big, empty square at half-past five in the evening, in the darkness and the rain, my mind crammed with historical explanations and detailed descriptions. At first I thought of going straight to the airport and getting rid of my hunger there, for I guessed that Lazar would be there early, and even though we had agreed to meet between seven and eight, he would soon begin to worry about me. But on second thought I decided that for the sake of our future travel, I had better start getting him used to trusting my reliability, and I wanted, too, to enjoy my last hours away from this couple, with whom I would undoubtedly be forced into ever closer proximity. I therefore sat down in a modest restaurant on the corner of one of the streets leading out of the Vatican and ate a full meal, which did not prevent me from arriving, complete with suitcase and medical kit, at our charter-flight counter two full minutes before the deadline agreed to with Mr. Lazar.