I joined in the general spirit of generosity and treated everyone to drinks before the meal and a bottle of wine to accompany it, which turned out to be a very good thing, for the slightly inebriated state in which we all reached the performance helped us gain a deeper appreciation of things that at first glance, and in spite of our goodwill toward Michaela, seemed completely primitive. Take the opening “act”: a half-naked fakir, his head covered with a mane of gleaming black hair which reached down to his chest, emerged from the audience, walked with slow, grave, thoughtful steps through the vast warehouse in the old port of London which had been converted into a hall for the performance, and climbed onto the huge, empty stage, which began to be suffused with the delicate shades of light of an Indian morning, just as I remembered them. He turned a little faucet, and in a profound silence began deliberately and at length to wash his hands, feet, and face. As he began to perform yoga exercises, facing the invisible sun, little troupes of performers entered one after the other, each dressed in a different color and carrying authentic folk instruments. Each group was composed of adults and children of various ages, who were referred to modestly in the program as “pupils,” and who, despite the astonishing talents that a number of them displayed, were anxiously attentive throughout the evening to the subtle signals of their adult instructors. Although each troupe was allotted its own performance time and they were grouped separately in the corners of the vast stage, which was supposed to symbolize the map of India, they kept up a special kind of dialogue throughout the evening. While singers from one troupe performed, a child acrobat from another troupe would spring without warning from his place and for two or three minutes turn daring somersaults and cartwheels until he suddenly froze into a many-limbed contortion, like the statuette next to Michaela’s bed or like some primeval animal that no longer exists in the world; then he would unravel himself and go quietly back to his place. Or in the middle of a dance by three little girls, the ancient magician would suddenly rise from the heights of his podium at the back of the stage, throw some new magic into the air, and sink back to his seat. It was evident that a Western hand had intervened in the direction of the performance, in the attempt to create a meaningful tension between all the elements, whose power and uniqueness did not easily lend themselves to collaboration.
The primitiveness of these troupes was evident in the simple movements of the dancers and in the musical instruments, which consisted, for example, of two plain boards of wood banged together astonishingly fast, or chains of little bells tied around the ankles and tinkling with the movements of the feet, or even of a broken clay jar whose spout could be sucked to produce a sound resembling the rumble of approaching thunder. It was precisely this primitiveness that aroused a storm of emotion in Michaela. She had expected something more stylish, adapted to the “limitations” of the Western mentality, and here she was suddenly confronted, in the middle of gray London, with absolute authenticity, of the kind she remembered so vividly from the dark alleys of Calcutta or the train station of Bombay. Her cheeks burned, and tears shone in her great eyes, as if she had discovered something precious and intimate that had been lost to her and that she no longer believed she would find again, although in her heart of hearts she had not given up hoping. I noticed that in her excitement she kept losing her concentration, and her eyes would stray from the stage to us, as if to test our reactions and see if in us too the right soul was coming to life. And I think that we passed the test; not only I, to whom the Indian dancers and singers seemed to be reenacting the gradual and imperceptible process by which I had fallen in love the previous winter, but even my father — who my mother and I suspected would not have the patience for a performance without a plot — appeared tense and moved by the silent but clear and touching dialogue taking place between the “pupils” and the “teachers,” which began with acrobatic exercises agilely performed by a hefty Indian countrywoman and emulated by a little girl and boy, who were not daunted by the most amazing and dangerous tricks, and ended with a tall, gorgeous Indian woman wrapped in a glittering sari, who told with growing vehemence a long, impassioned story, which according to the program notes concerned the struggles between the gods. When the performance came to an end, the children in the audience were invited to join the Indian artists dancing and singing on the stage, and the stage was suddenly filled with rosy-cheeked, blond English children, who began to imitate the Indians’ movements with such astonishing skill that it seemed as if they must be possessed by wandering Indian souls.
The audience rose to its feet in a storm of applause, including my shy father, who clapped enthusiastically while Michaela actually wept with joy and triumph at the success of her efforts to open closed hearts such as mine and my parents’ to the Indian experience. She was still determined to return to India, and she was afraid that since it “seemed to me” that I had already been there, and it “seemed to me” that I had grasped the principle of India, I would have no motive to return. She would repeat this formula with utter seriousness, as if my trip to India hadn’t been real, as if I hadn’t sailed down the Ganges River in the evening to see the burning of the bodies next to the ghats of Varanasi, as if I hadn’t gone into the temples of Bodhgaya and sat in the dark, rotting cinema in Calcutta. No, none of this counted with her, because it had all been secondary to the external aim of taking care of Einat and finding favor in the eyes of her parents. As long as I hadn’t been to India for my own sake, to try to purify my soul, which was in need, like all souls, of purification, it was as if I had never been there at all. Although I had given her my promise, after proposing to her in the roadside diner next to Lydda airport, that I would not stop her from going back to India, she now feared the opposition of my parents, whom she had grown very fond of during their visit to London. She knew they would be scandalized if she took off alone for India, with the baby or without her, and it was therefore important to her for me to accompany her, for part of the time at least, perhaps in the context of observing the sidewalk doctors of Calcutta — or the “doctors of the forgotten,” as the French called them — and thus take responsibility for her trip vis-à-vis my parents. On the face of things, it seemed strange that a woman as free and independent as Michaela, whose relations with her own parents were tenuous in the extreme, should worry about upsetting mine, but I was already aware that a bond had formed between my wife and my parents — especially my mother, who had apparently decided to take her daughter-in-law under her wing in the wake of my coldness, which she sensed in spite of my efforts to appear smiling and attentive and to fulfill all my obligations, real or imaginary, toward Michaela.