Free Open Heart by A.B. Yehoshua Page A

order to shut me up too. “One night is worth something in life too,” she said, rebuking her husband, and she gave me a reproachful look as well, even though I hadn’t said a word.
    We had no alternative but to leave the hotel, and the minute we hit the street two Indian boys pounced on us, relieved us of the knapsack and suitcases, and led us to see other hotels. And since we now felt light and liberated after the long, cramped flight, and the weather was soft and mild, we walked as if floating on air to not one but five hotels. The travel agent’s warning that we were due to arrive in India at the height of the pilgrim season proved true. The hotels Mrs. Lazar approved of were full, and the hotels which could take us were rejected by this impossible woman, who went up by herself to “smell the rooms,” as her husband remarked with a helpless smile, in which to my astonishment I also sensed a hidden admiration. And thus we wandered around the streets of the old city in the company of the two boys, who were enthusiastically prepared to lead us farther and farther, until after an hour of searching we finally found a hotel which was “at least possible,” and whose prices turned out to be no higher than those of the ones that had been rejected. Our two rooms were next to each other, quite small but clean, or at least colorful. The windows were draped in curtains of pale green silk, like saris, and there were heavy chains of bright yellow wilted flowers hanging over the beds. After a day and a half I was really alone at last, and the welcome solitude wrapped me in its sweetness . It was already four-thirty in the afternoon, and I wondered whether I was too tired to do anything but take a shower and get into bed or whether I should go out now, before it got dark, into the new world beyond the door. In the end hunger gained the upper hand, and since Lazar and his wife had uncharacteristically failed to mention their plans for our next meal, I decided to go out and get something to eat on my own. I wasn’t sure how frugal I needed to be since the financial arrangements between us had not yet been finalized. All I had to go on was the vague and general statement of intent made by Lazar’s wife on the first evening in their apartment. The arguments over the choice of the hotel, which was situated in a far from elegant quarter, indicated that in spite of her indignant protests, expense was a factor to be taken into account, at least as far as Lazar was concerned. It wasn’t going to be a luxury trip. And indeed, why should it be?
    There was no restaurant in the hotel, only a small, dim bar in which a few guests in white turbans and old-fashioned European suits sat paging through newspapers and conversing quietly inEnglish, as if they were actually Britons who had been left behind when the Empire was abandoned and whom the years had darkened into old Indians. I changed a hundred dollars into rupees at the reception desk and emerged into a little street full of soft, dry sunlight, still clad in the thin skin of the English identity in which I had been pleasantly and secretly wrapped since landing in India . Unwilling to station myself, like an avid Israeli tourist, in front of the trays heaped up on the many food stalls, in order to nibble something sticky and mysterious, I decided to go back to the first, rejected hotel, where I had caught a glimpse of a large restaurant. I succeeded in retracing our footsteps with surprising ease, and entered the restaurant, where I examined the food lying on the tables before choosing the dish I fancied, a portion of roast meat buried in a thick black chapati resting on a large yellowish leaf. My hunger satisfied, I felt an urge to go upstairs and take a look at one of the rooms, to see what Mrs. Lazar had found so offensive. An Indian servant took me up to the second floor to show me the only vacant room left in the hotel, possibly the same room they had shown her. It was, in fact, a