Open Heart (6 page)

To my great relief my seat on the plane was not next to the Lazars, but several rows distant from them. If they had arranged it that way on purpose, I thought, it was an encouraging sign. They too wanted to avoid excessive intimacy, which would make us get on each other’s nerves right at the beginning of the trip. And indeed, for the first three hours of the flight I saw them only once, on my way to the toilet. They were sitting in the last row, in the smokers’ section; their breakfast trays had not yet been removed, but the curtain on the window was drawn. Lazar’s wife was sleeping, the dark glasses clutched in her fist, her head buried in the chest of her husband, who was studying some papers. My parents, who were only a little older than they were, would never have dared to display such intimacy in public. I intended to slip past without their noticing me, but Lazar took off his gold-rimmed reading glasses and asked me affably if I had managed to sleep. “I didn’t even try,” I replied immediately. “I’ve decided to tire myself out in anticipation of the flight to New Delhi tonight.” I could see that this practical answer was to his liking. “Do you find it difficult to fall asleep in the air too?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “So you’re like me,” he pronounced happily, as if he had found an ally. “I’ve never been able to sleep on a plane. We’ll see what happens tonight.” His wife raised her head; without her glasses her eyes looked red and puffy with sleep, but they
immediately lit up in that mechanical, indiscriminate smile of hers. “What nice parents you have,” she said unhesitatingly, as if she had just seen them in her dreams. “Yes,” I nodded in
agreement
, and added without knowing why, “They’re not
hysterical
.” But she understood. “That’s right,” she said. “Your mother told me that they actually encouraged you to make the trip with us.”

“Yes, India has apparently kept its charms for Englishmen of the older generation.”

“You won’t be sorry you came with us,” she said soothingly, as if she still felt that she had to overcome the vestiges of my resistance. “You’ll see.” I didn’t answer, only smiled faintly. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her about the foreign
currency
the girl from her office had withdrawn from the bank in my name and for some reason pocketed herself, but I restrained myself and continued on my way to the toilet.

We reached Rome at eleven o’clock in the morning, and had about ten hours until the night flight to New Delhi. During these ten hours we had to get our visas for India, and Lazar decided that we should drag our luggage with us in order not to lose precious time, so that we wouldn’t have to come back to the airport in case of any delay with the visas, should we miss our flight and have to sleep over in Rome. But his wife was in favor of leaving the luggage at the airport so that we could get around more freely. They immediately plunged into a heated argument, which Lazar, with his practical pessimism, seemed on the point of winning, but suddenly, without any warning, she gained the upper hand, and the three of us went to look for the baggage check. We walked up and down corridors, confused by
misleading
directions, with Lazar grumbling at his wife all the time, “You see what a mess you’ve gotten us into now?” until in the end she stopped smiling and hissed, “Stop whining, get a hold of yourself,” and he shut up. Finally we found the place, which seemed to be located in a very out-of-the-way spot, but when we remarked on this to the baggage handler, he protested
indignantly
and pointed to the nearby elevator, which reached the heart of the airport. Once more we were obliged to undergo the tedious process of opening our luggage and having it inspected, and I was forced to contemplate for the second time their
intimate
belongings—far too many, in my opinion, for a short trip
with a serious purpose to a poor country. Lazar collected the claim tickets and we emerged unburdened into a large plaza to look for a cab. His wife smiled happily, and said with a note of self-congratulation, without any animosity, “There you are—now we can move freely.” But although Lazar too seemed pleased, he didn’t want to admit it. “We’ve wasted the whole morning on the luggage, and who knows if those Indians go back to work at all after their lunch break.” But it transpired that the Indians worked without a break. When we arrived at the consulate building, which was surrounded by shrubs and ornamental trees, we found a long line of waiting Indians, and we lost no time in joining it. But Lazar soon expressed doubts as to the purpose of the line and wandered off to make inquiries, returning to announce triumphantly that we were in the wrong line: this one was only for Indians, the line for foreigners was around the back. And indeed, behind the building, in a little annex, we found an office with only a few European youths waiting in front of it. Lazar took my two passports, deliberating whether to
present
the Indians with the Israeli one or the British one, which seemed to interest him greatly, for he kept turning the pages to see how it was organized. In the end he gave it back to me, saying that we had better not present them with a passport that we would not know how to defend if it turned out to have flaws we had not noticed, and handed the three Israeli passports to the quiet, dark-skinned clerk, who refused even to look at them without the airline tickets and vaccination certificates. Lazar whipped out these documents, which he had ready, and smiled modestly. As a bureaucrat himself, he knew how much damage and delay could be caused by one recalcitrant official at a pivotal point. But the official wasn’t in the least hostile. The visas were quickly stamped, and we returned to the Roman street with eight free hours in front of us.

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.