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glanced at his watch. “But till when? There are so many technical arrangements to make, and I planned on leaving the day after tomorrow, to catch the Tuesday flight from Rome.” But he must have sensed the threat of refusal in my continuing silence, since he stopped pressuring me and invited me to his home that evening to talk over the details and to give me time to make up my mind. It would have been churlish to refuse the invitation, and besides, I felt that these two assertive men wouldn’t allow me to start resisting them now. As I was making my way out of the room, address and directions in hand, Lazar called after me, “Wait a minute. I forgot to ask, are you married?” When I shook my head, his spirits immediately soared; he turned to Hishin with raised eyebrows and asked, “In that case, what has he got to think about?” and the two of them laughed good-humoredly.
    The afternoon turned very rainy, and as I hurried from bed to bed in the intensive care unit, battling to stop a sudden hemorrhage in the young woman who had been operated on that morning, I made up my mind to refuse. If it was only for the sake of some weird trip to India that I had suddenly become ideal in the eyes of the head of the department, why should I give up the last month of rounds to which I was entitled? Every day I was learning new and fascinating things, every minute in the operating room thrilled me, even if I was only watching. What could I possibly gain from a sudden trip to India in the middle of winter? But as dusk descended and I arrived at my apartment wet and tired, prepared to call Lazar and give my decision, I had second thoughts. Why insult a man who might be useful to me one day? The least I could do was listen politely to the details before finally turning him down. I hurried to take a shower and change my clothes. At eight o’clock I rode north to an apartment blockstanding in a broad avenue of oak trees rustling in the wind and the rain. I covered my motorcycle with its tarpaulin, but when I saw that the rain was coming down harder I changed my mind and dragged it under the foundation pillars of the building. On the top floor, in a large, elegant apartment, I was impatiently greeted by Lazar, dressed in a loose red flannel shirt which made him look bulkier and older. “But how could I have forgotten to tell you to bring your passport?” he greeted me plaintively. “Is it valid? When was the last time you went abroad?” The last time I had been abroad had been two years earlier, on a short trip to Europe after graduating from medical school. I didn’t have the faintest idea whether my passport was still valid, and I tried with an embarrassed smile to fend off his enthusiasm and to indicate that although I had kept the appointment, I was still very undecided and had come only to hear him out again and think it over. “What’s there to think about?” cried Lazar in astonishment and a kind of childish anger. “But if you insist, come and see where I want to take you, and don’t panic; even if it looks like the end of the world on the map, we can make it there and back in two weeks, and even take in a few sights on the way, because I don’t want to turn the trip into one long via dolorosa either.” And he pulled me into a large, attractive living room. A boy of about seventeen in a pale blue school uniform shirt, very like his father except that his hair was long and soft, immediately stood up and left the room.
    On a low glass table lay a large open atlas, with photo albums and travel guides scattered around it. “You’re not the only one who was taken by surprise,” Lazar apologized. “It fell on us like a bolt out of the blue when that girl knocked on the door yesterday with the letter. But first come and see where we’re going. Here’s New Delhi, here’s Bombay, here’s Calcutta, a kind of triangle, and here’s Gaya, a remote but holy town surrounded by temples. Tomorrow I’m going to Jerusalem to