Open Heart (13 page)

Lazar’s wife uttered a cry of admiration and praised the view enthusiastically to the Indians. Lazar leaned silently on the balustrade, sighed, and smiled faintly to himself. Suddenly I understood his wife’s hidden power, and why he had been prepared to give up the new hotel so easily. He had a deep faith in her
intuitions
about people, and since she believed in the little porter and his promises to lead us to a high place overlooking the river, he gave in to her. And perhaps the fact that he would be saving a considerable sum of money had something to do with it too, for I had already noticed that in spite of the emergency that had
precipitated
the journey, he was not indifferent to its cost. A great deal of money had already been spent, and there was no knowing how much more would be needed on the way back, when the patient would be with us. It would be impossible to drag her through narrow alleys to a simple hotel, however unique the view from the balcony—which Lazar’s wife continued to praise extravagantly, to the delight of the hotel owners.

But it was only now that they realized we needed two rooms. The little porter had taken us for a family, perhaps imagining me to be their son on holiday with his parents. Even now, when they heard that I was only a doctor accompanying the Lazars to Gaya, they couldn’t understand why we needed another room. They would bring another bed right away, and set up a screen in the middle of the big room. Lazar looked at me. I could have refused immediately, but I wanted him to be the one to demand another room. The thought of spending the whole night in the same room
with them seemed too much to cope with. They too seemed
uneasy
at the idea. “No,” said Lazar, “we’ll take another little room for him.” But it appeared that all the rooms in the inn were full, and the only solution was to put me up in a kind of shed next to the building used as a dormitory for backpackers and solitary pilgrims. Suddenly I felt very bitter toward Lazar’s wife, who had dragged us here, but I said nothing and picked up the knapsack, since I would rather sleep in the shed than share their intimacy. But she, feeling guilty and embarrassed, objected
vehemently
. The idea that they would remain here, with the
spectacular
view of the sacred river, while I was relegated to a kind of dormitory seemed to her so unjust that she began coaxing me to stay with them. “What does it matter? It’s a big room, we won’t take up a lot of space, they’ll bring a screen. Why should you miss the view of the river and the ghats? That’s what we came here for in the first place. I don’t like to think of you down there alone.”

“I don’t mind being alone,” I said, with a faintly
contemptuous
smile, but she didn’t understand what I was getting at and continued enthusiastically. “Once in a lifetime you get to see something this amazing. The room’s not important—it’s what you can see from it, the wonderful view, the river, the ghats, the pilgrims, and the night falling. Why should you sleep in some mean, wretched place? You deserve better.” And then she
suddenly
added, “Why should it bother you? Last night all three of us slept squashed up with the Indian in one little compartment.”

Lazar remained silent and gloomy, also apparently angry at his wife for complicating things. But she appealed to him helplessly to persuade me, touching his hand lightly to convey her request. And Lazar said quietly, “He’ll decide for himself where he wants to sleep, what do you want of his life?” And she said, “It’s not fair for him to sleep downstairs with all the vagabonds.” And suddenly, without warning—her conscience must have really been bothering her—she threatened that we would have to go and look for a new hotel unless I agreed to share their room. Now Lazar gave me a despairing look. “Why shouldn’t you sleep up here with us, really? There’s no problem as far as we’re
concerned
, if you don’t mind. We’re leaving tomorrow morning, and the air’s better up here, and there’s such a special view.” His eyes were hollow, and his skin looked so gray that for a moment I felt
concerned about his health again. In the meantime the Indians had decided for us, and two boys with gleaming white smiles brought in a folding bed and a red screen decorated with
paintings
of snakes, and without further ado Lazar’s wife indicated a place next to the window, where they opened the bed and set up the screen, and only then did she turn to me and say, “Put your suitcase behind the screen. Don’t worry, we’ll be quiet as mice, you won’t even know we’re here.”

I gave in. The view from the little balcony with its flower pots was so stunning and exhilarating after the long cramped train trip that I couldn’t bring myself to refuse the offer to remain in the room with them, especially since I knew Lazar’s wife wouldn’t give up until she’d searched all the nearby hotels for a decent room for me, and I felt sorry for the exhausted Lazar. But even though I had to sleep with them that night, I didn’t have to stay now and sit behind the screen on the folding bed until they had undressed and bathed, being careful not to expose themselves to my eyes. Though my clothes were also damp and sticky from the journey and the walk through the alleys and I too would have liked to wash and change, I immediately announced that I was going out for a little walk, to see the pilgrims dipping in the river and perhaps, before it got dark, the cremation rites at the famous “burning ghats” referred to in the guidebook. Lazar, who had already taken off his shoes and shirt and was busy massaging his big stomach, said with a tired smile, “Even though you’ve already proved that you’re not the one who gets lost and we are, please do me a favor and watch where you’re going, because there aren’t even any streets here, it’s all one big
confusion
, and if you get lost here you might as well be reborn as somebody else, because you’ll never find your way back.” And we all burst out laughing in a spirit of reconciliation, and we even forgave the stubbornness. I agreed to return by a certain time, as if the Lazars were my parents. When I went down into the little garden in front of the inn and looked at the maze of passages and courtyards surrounding me, for a moment I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. I decided to find someone, a boy or a girl, to guide me. Under one of the trees I saw the little porter sitting with his friends and eating his supper, and although his English was almost nonexistent, I asked him to lead me to the river, because he had already impressed
me, not only with the enterprise that had attracted Lazar’s wife but also with his delicacy and tact. I knew that he would return me safely to the inn, which for a reason I could not explain suddenly tugged at my heart.

Indeed, he led me nimbly to the riverbank and to a ghat he called Lalita. There we descended many broken steps, making our way through the strong smells and colors of the pilgrims, Brahmins, and beggars. And then, without even asking me, the porter installed me in a boat which already contained two young Scandinavian backpackers, and we embarked for the center of the river to observe the rites from the sacred water. We saw women in saris descending the steps slowly and gracefully, cupping their hair in their hands and dipping it in the water, and half-naked men diving deep into the river and disappearing for a long time before they reemerged, purified. In the distance, all along the riverbank, we saw many more ghats teeming with
pilgrims
, all performing their religious duties in a tumultuous silence. And then, in the gathering dusk, loudspeakers began hoarsely chanting long prayers, and many of the bathers came out of the water and stood on the riverbank or the steps to pray and perform complicated yoga exercises. The boatman
abandoned
his oars and kneeled down to pray while the boat was swept toward the next ghat, where spirals of white smoke rose from a big red funeral pyre. The two tourists and I sat riveted by the sight of the boatman sunk in his prayers while the boat changed direction and floated aimlessly into the middle of the river, and now we could see that while one bank was teeming with people and activity, densely strewn with ghats and temples, the opposite bank was empty and abandoned, with nary a house or a human figure to be seen, evaporating into the void of the sky as if all that crowded holiness dissolved in the middle of the river and turned into nothingness. When the chanting finally stopped, the boatman rose from his knees and picked up the oars with a dreamy look in his eyes. I said to him in a friendly tone, “Shiva,” because I had read in Lazar’s guidebook that Varanasi was the city of the god Shiva, the Destroyer. His dark face immediately filled with interest, and he nodded his head, but corrected me: “Vishvanath,” and, dropping the oars, he spread out his arms to embrace the whole of the universe. “Vishvanath,” he repeated, as if to stress that this name was bigger and more important than
that of Shiva. Gently placing my finger between my eyes to
signify
the place of the third eye, I repeated softly, “Shiva, Shiva?” while the two Scandinavians stared. But the boatman stood his ground, even though he seemed pleased by my knowledge. He corrected me again—“Triambaka, Triambaka”—and repeated, “Vishvanath, Vishvanath.” When he saw that I was disappointed by these names, however, he eventually acquiesced and said with a sly smile, “Also Shiva, also Shiva.”

When darkness fell, the little porter took me to one of the ghats where bodies of the dead were burned. First I saw how people threw flowers and sweets into a well; then, from a little distance, for the dwarf warned me not to go too close, I stood for a long time watching a body burn on a funeral pyre while the members of the family sat in a circle and chatted quietly. I waited until the fire went out, and in the dark, by the light of a torch, the family stood up and slowly circled the ashes, and one of them cracked the skull to liberate the soul into the river, and they gathered up the ashes to sprinkle them on the water. Only then was I able to return to our inn, which was already mostly shrouded in
darkness
. I gave the porter a few rupees and he put his hands together in thanks, but he did not leave me, for he was afraid that I would go to the wrong room, so he led me up the pitch-dark steps until I was standing in front of the door to our room. I knocked lightly to announce my return, but when there was no reply, I carefully opened the door. The room was dark and the big beds were empty. The Lazars appeared to have moved them closer together in my absence. On the balcony I made out the two heavy
silhouettes.
When I approached, I found them in their bathrobes, their hair still wet from the shower. All that was left of the spectacular view was deep, empty darkness; the temples and the ghats had completely vanished, and only a few solitary torches still burned on the banks of the Ganges, with mysterious shadows stirring around them. Next to the Lazars stood a stool covered with an embroidered cloth, with plates holding the remains of their supper. They did not notice my arrival, for they were deep in a conversation. I knocked lightly on the balcony door, and they both immediately turned their heads, smiling and very pleased to
see me, like parents who had awaited their son. It turned out that in all this time they had not left the room but remained by themselves on the little balcony, content with the distant, general view. “You’ve been sitting on the balcony all this time?” I
marveled
. “We’re not as young as we used to be,” said Lazar
complacently
, “and this balcony is an experience in itself.” He was in a good mood, and he seemed pleased with me too, for succeeding again in not getting lost. His wife invited me to sit down beside them and tell them about my experiences on the river, but Lazar stood up and asked if I had had anything to eat. For a minute I couldn’t remember, since I felt no hunger, but when I replied in the negative he urged his wife to get up and clear away their leftovers. “We thought of leaving something for you,” he
apologized
, “but we know you prefer eating alone.” His wife said, “Never mind, we’ll go down now and get something for him. What would you like to eat?”

“What would I like?” I repeated. “What have they got here?” And when they tried to tell me I interrupted them and said, “It doesn’t matter, just something light, whatever you bring. I’m really not hungry, I don’t know why.”

“Maybe the soul of an Indian fakir has already been
incarnated
in your body and from now on you’ll be satisfied with a starvation diet,” Lazar said with a chuckle, still diverted by the idea of reincarnation, which now, given the total darkness and the soft Indian tumult rising from the courtyard, seemed to me correct, even if impossible.

They both said at once, “Go and get washed, and we’ll go downstairs and get you something to eat. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but it’s Friday night,” and they went out to allow me to get undressed and wash myself in peace and quiet. In some strange way I didn’t feel dirty and sticky, even though my trousers had got wet in the river and cow dung had stuck to my shoes; it was as if the boat trip had dipped me in the river too, and the long contemplation of the cremation and the cracking of the blazing skull had purified me with a sense of profound mystery, which had made me forget my hunger and reconciled me to the dirt. But I didn’t want to embarrass the Lazars. I washed myself quickly in cold water before they came back. I had a long wait before they returned with a basket of fruit and candies and fresh-smelling chapatis, as well as a big bowl of steaming rice mixed with pieces
of boiled mutton; and strangely enough it was Lazar, not his wife, who encouraged and coaxed me to eat, with a tender,
absurdly
fatherly air, trying to arouse my lost appetite and insisting on adding more and more to my plate, as if the whole great hospital in his charge had now been narrowed down to a single person, on whom he could focus the full strength of his control and concern. His wife sat opposite me, her stomach swelling, her long legs crossed, smoking a slender cigarette and examining me. When I described the cracking of the skull in order to liberate the soul, her face twisted in dismay. “How terrible—why did you look?” But Lazar understood me. “It sounds fascinating, I wish we could have seen it ourselves,” he said, as if he were actually sorry we were leaving the next morning by train for Gaya. “Tomorrow?”