“And when will you see the baby?” she cried in a scandalized tone, as if it were a duty or a pleasure that couldn’t be missed. But I, thrilled at the opportunity to be alone with her, which had come my way so easily, hastily reassured them on this score. “You’ll still have plenty of opportunities to see the baby,” I repeatedly promised Lazar, who didn’t seem in the least enthusiastic, and we arranged that I would bring Dori back to Sir Geoffrey’s office in two hours’ time. Thus, by an unexpected coincidence, she was suddenly in my charge, albeit for only two hours, but in a place completely unfamiliar to her, wrapped in the blue velvet tunic I remembered from India, which apparently belonged to the category of clothes that could be worn anywhere. With her high heels drumming a sure and steady rhythm, she began to walk beside me — a plump, ripe, middle-aged woman, who by the time I reached her age might have already departed from this world. This new thought filled me not only with sadness but also with a tender pleasure. In a friendly way, but maintaining a discreet distance, as if we had never lain together naked, I began to ask her about her mother and how she was getting on in the old folks’ home, a subject I knew she enjoyed talking about and one that I felt hinted at the intimacy between us as well. When we went quietly into the nursery and I received permission to take Dori into the babies’ room for a minute, I wasn’t satisfied with pointing out Shiva’s crib to her, but I woke the baby up and put her in Dori’s arms, so that she would hold something that was part of my flesh and blood.
She hugged the baby very warmly, uttering cries of excitement and delight, which to the nurse standing next to us no doubt sounded phony and exaggerated but which I knew were genuine. Shiva’s abundant hair amused Dori greatly, and she clasped the hairy little head to her bosom and refused to part with her, until I had to intervene tactfully and return the wide-awake baby to her crib. I was so moved by Dori’s enthusiasm that I couldn’t restrain myself, and as I led her through a side door into the hospital’s bustling emergency entrance, I told her the entire story of my successful delivery of the baby in our bedroom, in detail. The automatic smile in her eyes was now mixed with immense curiosity. She was delighted with my story. In fact, she seemed so absorbed that instead of taking her to St. Paul’s, as I had offered, and risking bringing her back late to the meeting with her husband, I suggested that we take advantage of the rare warmth of the sun and go on strolling around the streets in the vicinity of the hospital, and perhaps venture a little farther, into the nicer neighborhood where my parents’ room was situated. Suddenly I wanted to know what this fussy woman who had dragged us from one hotel to another in India until she found one that lived up to her expectations would think of the pretty place Michaela had found for my parents, which she might want to consider for herself during a future London vacation. And since the keys to the garden gate and to the room had been attached to my key ring since I had said good-bye to my parents at the train station a few days before, we would have no problem getting in.
Behind the small house, which stood in a well-tended garden, was a separate gate leading past beds of roses to my parents’ room. There were little bells hanging on the gate, which were evidently intended to give the landlords a measure of control over the comings and goings of their tenants. But they were superfluous now, since the owners of the house were in Italy. After the bells had stopped ringing, I opened the door of the room, which was very dark, and invited Dori to peep inside. Although the windows and curtains had been closed for several days, there was a pleasant smell in the room, a combination of the odor of the floor polish and the lingering ambience of my parents, some of whose familiar clothes were still hanging in the closet. Perhaps because of this ambience, Dori hesitated at first to enter the large, attractive room, but when I insisted on showing it off to her and proving how reasonable the rent was in view of its many virtues, she agreed to follow me into the little kitchenette too, and even into the tiny bathroom, which I knew my mother had left clean and tidy. It was cold in the room. There was a coin-operated gas heater which I wanted to turn on, and I also wanted to draw the curtain so that she could see the pretty garden through the window, but she stopped me with a gesture, sat down on an armchair in the dim light, like that time in her mother’s apartment, and stretched her legs out in front of her. All of a sudden I felt a surge of lust, together with profound anxiety. A whole year had already passed, and I didn’t know how to go on from here. Was I supposed to declare my love to her again? In the meantime, I offered her a cup of tea, since I knew my parents kept no coffee in the room. Looking surprised but smiling gloriously, she agreed to this strange offer, perhaps because she too wanted a chance to examine her feelings. But when I came back into the room after switching on the electric kettle and putting the tea bags in the cups, I found her standing impatiently, as if she had just grasped how odd, and even perverse, it would be to spend the little time we had left before returning to the hospital sitting and drinking tea in my parents’ dark, closed room. She expressed a wish, which seemed to me rather reckless and childish, to see the rooms in the rest of the house. I glanced at my watch; we had thirty or forty minutes left before we had to leave to keep our appointment with Lazar, which I was determined to be on time for so as not to give him any grounds for suspicion. Did she realize, I wondered feverishly, that we would never find a better place than this in which to make love with perfect anonymity and secrecy, or was she put off by the idea of making love on my parents’ pushed-together beds? I began to feel the lust churning in the pit of my stomach, but I followed her into a long, narrow passage that led into a dark and surprisingly large sitting room, where all the furniture — armchairs, sofas, and cabinets — was covered with white sheets. I wanted to switch on the light, but the electricity appeared to be disconnected in this part of the house. I thought this would be enough to discourage her from continuing her explorations, but her curiosity knew no bounds, and smiling to herself, without asking my permission as the representative of the subtenants in this house, she went on and opened a wooden door leading to a charming little study paneled in reddish wood, which opened into another passage that led into a room that was unexpectedly light, for one of the curtains was open. The meager daylight streaming in through the window looked bright and strong in contrast to the darkness shrouding the rest of the house. This fine, big bedroom was different in its light, modern style from the other rooms, and it was immediately clear that it had taken the fancy of my companion, for she began to scrutinize it with an inquisitive, proprietary eye, and suddenly pulled the sheet off the bed, disclosing a handsome floral bedspread in various shades of green.