Open Heart (21 page)

After the transfusion of approximately 450 cc’s of blood,
according
to my estimation, I removed the intravenous line from Lazar’s wife’s vein, applied alcohol to the spot, and gently folded her arm. Again she smiled sweetly at me. If not for Lazar’s
needless
haste in catching the tube, not a single drop of blood would have been spilled in vain, but he was careless, and a bit of his wife’s blood splashed onto my clothes. “Never mind,” I said, and disconnected the tube from the infusion line in the wrist of my patient, who had calmed down and slipped into a doze, which I wanted to turn into a real sleep. I therefore took a Hartman’s infusion bag, hung it from a nail in the wall, connected it to the infusion line which had just been thirstily and efficiently drinking in the blood, and went over to the window to draw the curtain and darken the room. But before I did so I stood still for a
moment
and relished the golden moment to the full. “And now we all need a rest,” I said, facing them, “especially you, Dori,” and I blushed, for this was the first time since the beginning of the trip that I had addressed her directly by her husband’s pet name for her. But they both smiled at me affectionately, and Lazar put his arm around me in a conciliatory gesture. “You need a rest too,” he said, but I was as alert and full of vitality as if I myself had received a blood transfusion. I packed the instruments in the knapsack and put it in the other room, and since I knew that the pair of them were perpetually hungry, I offered to look after our patient while they went to have lunch, and then, if everything seemed to be going smoothly, I would go down to eat myself, and perhaps have a look at a nearby museum.

But I knew that I wouldn’t be going to look at any museum. It was the Ganges River and the swarming steps leading down to it and the vast, mysterious, dark brown temples which I hadn’t managed to see before that called me. After eating a late lunch by myself in the hotel restaurant, encouraged by the clear signs of recovery in Einat—who, after absorbing the entire contents of the infusion bag, woke up and even tasted a bit of the food her
parents brought her—I allowed myself to go out to the river before darkness fell. A warm, fine rain sifted through the air, and a stench rose from the town like incense. Who could have guessed that I would return here, I mused, as once more I made my way through the narrow alleys and the tireless, endless crowd until I reached the riverbank, which in spite of the rain was full of bathers. I hired a boat by myself and asked the boatman to row me to the southern ghats, so that I could view the great temples from the heart of the river. The dusky air merged with the river and the boat glided calmly over the water, but I did not succeed in drinking in the mystery. I was still preoccupied with all that had just passed: the argument at the airport with Lazar, the sudden faint, and especially the successful blood transfusion, which had been so elegantly performed. The smile that had gleamed from his wife’s eyes as I took her blood now floated pleasantly through my thoughts. It seemed that I had succeeded in impressing them, and when we returned to Israel, as the
cunning
Hishin had hinted, Lazar might be able to help me stay on at the hospital. But I soon realized that it wasn’t Lazar I was thinking of but his wife, who couldn’t stay by herself. And in the final analysis, I thought with satisfaction, it was a good thing she had joined us; how would I have found a suitable donor in the eternal crowd? And who would have helped me persuade Lazar to interrupt the journey?

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.

When dusk began to fall, Lazar and his wife showed up at last, full of impressions from their day. Lazar returned my camera and thanked me for the idea of taking the trip. In addition to the sweetmeats and silk scarves they had bought for themselves, they had brought me a present, a model of the Taj Mahal the size of a small foot, made of pink marble. Lazar’s wife described the sights they had seen enthusiastically. Lazar too appeared relaxed, amused by the strange Indians he had encountered on the way, as if he had only now begun to wonder about their true nature. His face had acquired a tan during the day and no longer had its sickly gray tinge. They were about to order a big meal for the four of us to be brought up to the room, but I suddenly felt trapped and restless and got up to go out for a walk and say my good-bye to India. As I had done ten days before, I began
walking
around the dark streets of New Delhi, this time in a more affluent district, mingling and moving easily with the crowd whose bodies had a strangely ethereal quality in the darkness. And suddenly I sensed that in spite of my youthful boast to the Lazars, I would never return to India. As long as I lived, I would never see the wonderful Taj Mahal which they had both seen today, and this strange certainty began pressing sorrowfully
inside
me.

I went into a fabric shop for the first time since I’d arrived in
India, to buy something for my parents. Entering the fragrant darkness, which rustled with flowered fabrics, I thought of my parents’ two very separate beds and wondered if they would
consent
to having anything so bold and blazing in their bedroom. In the end I bought two lengths of brightly colored cloth which seemed to me suitable for bedcovers; I wanted to go on and buy something else as well, because everything was so amazingly cheap, but suddenly I was fed up with wandering around alone and decided to go back to the hotel and chat for a while with Lazar and his wife; maybe she too would thank me for the
enjoyable
day I had given her. When I got back they had apparently gone to bed, for there was no sound in their room, not even a crack of light under the door. There was nothing left to do but go up to bed myself, and as on the last night in Bodhgaya, I tossed and turned for hours in search of sleep, which usually came to me the minute I put my head on the pillow.

We arrived in Rome in the afternoon, and of course we missed the El Al plane, that always left exactly on time so it would reach Israel before the beginning of the Sabbath. We had to wait until Sunday, but Lazar had not yet given up hope of arriving in time for his important meeting. No sooner had we settled into a big old-fashioned hotel in Via dei Coronari than he went off, to his wife’s obvious annoyance, to find a cheap flight that would get him back to Israel the next day. When I returned to the hotel in the evening, after strolling around the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, I found the two of them in the hotel lobby, a new sadness on his wife’s face. It appeared that in spite of his age, he had succeeded in getting himself onto a cheap student flight that left early the next afternoon and arrived in Tel Aviv via Athens late on Saturday evening. Delighted with his own ingenuity, he now tried to appease his wife, who saw the whole thing as vanity and caprice on the part of a man who believed that he was
indispensable
. The next day at noon we said good-bye to him. He seemed tense, and adopted a slightly mocking air toward his wife, who to my surprise looked really upset, as if what was at stake were not a parting for twenty-four hours but total
desertion
. Although I was standing next to them he embraced her and kissed her again and again, smiling as if he were secretly enjoying the anxiety that stemmed from some deep and obscure source within her, and over which she had no control. Then he turned
to me, as if I were a member of the family, and said, “Take care of her until tomorrow.” I saw that these innocent and half-joking words intensified her anger and her stress, and she immediately extricated herself from his embrace, gave him a little push, and said, “Go on, go, and be careful on the way and phone the
minute
you get home.”