tongue to ask her about the foreign currency the girl from her office had withdrawn from the bank in my name and for some reason pocketed herself, but I restrained myself and continued on my way to the toilet.
We reached Rome at eleven o’clock in the morning, and had about ten hours until the night flight to New Delhi. During these ten hours we had to get our visas for India, and Lazar decided that we should drag our luggage with us in order not to lose precious time, so that we wouldn’t have to come back to the airport in case of any delay with the visas, should we miss our flight and have to sleep over in Rome. But his wife was in favor of leaving the luggage at the airport so that we could get around more freely. They immediately plunged into a heated argument, which Lazar, with his practical pessimism, seemed on the point of winning, but suddenly, without any warning, she gained the upper hand, and the three of us went to look for the baggage check. We walked up and down corridors, confused by misleading directions, with Lazar grumbling at his wife all the time, “You see what a mess you’ve gotten us into now?” until in the end she stopped smiling and hissed, “Stop whining, get a hold of yourself,” and he shut up. Finally we found the place, which seemed to be located in a very out-of-the-way spot, but when we remarked on this to the baggage handler, he protested indignantly and pointed to the nearby elevator, which reached the heart of the airport. Once more we were obliged to undergo the tedious process of opening our luggage and having it inspected, and I was forced to contemplate for the second time their intimate belongings—far too many, in my opinion, for a short tripwith a serious purpose to a poor country. Lazar collected the claim tickets and we emerged unburdened into a large plaza to look for a cab. His wife smiled happily, and said with a note of self-congratulation, without any animosity, “There you are—now we can move freely.” But although Lazar too seemed pleased, he didn’t want to admit it. “We’ve wasted the whole morning on the luggage, and who knows if those Indians go back to work at all after their lunch break.” But it transpired that the Indians worked without a break. When we arrived at the consulate building, which was surrounded by shrubs and ornamental trees, we found a long line of waiting Indians, and we lost no time in joining it. But Lazar soon expressed doubts as to the purpose of the line and wandered off to make inquiries, returning to announce triumphantly that we were in the wrong line: this one was only for Indians, the line for foreigners was around the back. And indeed, behind the building, in a little annex, we found an office with only a few European youths waiting in front of it. Lazar took my two passports, deliberating whether to present the Indians with the Israeli one or the British one, which seemed to interest him greatly, for he kept turning the pages to see how it was organized. In the end he gave it back to me, saying that we had better not present them with a passport that we would not know how to defend if it turned out to have flaws we had not noticed, and handed the three Israeli passports to the quiet, dark-skinned clerk, who refused even to look at them without the airline tickets and vaccination certificates. Lazar whipped out these documents, which he had ready, and smiled modestly. As a bureaucrat himself, he knew how much damage and delay could be caused by one recalcitrant official at a pivotal point. But the official wasn’t in the least hostile. The visas were quickly stamped, and we returned to the Roman street with eight free hours in front of us.
It was one o’clock, and Lazar’s wife, whom he called Dori, announced with a gleam in her eye that before anything else we had to find a good restaurant. But although I too was very hungry I decided that if I didn’t set limits right away, I would soon begin to find the pressure
We reached Rome at eleven o’clock in the morning, and had about ten hours until the night flight to New Delhi. During these ten hours we had to get our visas for India, and Lazar decided that we should drag our luggage with us in order not to lose precious time, so that we wouldn’t have to come back to the airport in case of any delay with the visas, should we miss our flight and have to sleep over in Rome. But his wife was in favor of leaving the luggage at the airport so that we could get around more freely. They immediately plunged into a heated argument, which Lazar, with his practical pessimism, seemed on the point of winning, but suddenly, without any warning, she gained the upper hand, and the three of us went to look for the baggage check. We walked up and down corridors, confused by misleading directions, with Lazar grumbling at his wife all the time, “You see what a mess you’ve gotten us into now?” until in the end she stopped smiling and hissed, “Stop whining, get a hold of yourself,” and he shut up. Finally we found the place, which seemed to be located in a very out-of-the-way spot, but when we remarked on this to the baggage handler, he protested indignantly and pointed to the nearby elevator, which reached the heart of the airport. Once more we were obliged to undergo the tedious process of opening our luggage and having it inspected, and I was forced to contemplate for the second time their intimate belongings—far too many, in my opinion, for a short tripwith a serious purpose to a poor country. Lazar collected the claim tickets and we emerged unburdened into a large plaza to look for a cab. His wife smiled happily, and said with a note of self-congratulation, without any animosity, “There you are—now we can move freely.” But although Lazar too seemed pleased, he didn’t want to admit it. “We’ve wasted the whole morning on the luggage, and who knows if those Indians go back to work at all after their lunch break.” But it transpired that the Indians worked without a break. When we arrived at the consulate building, which was surrounded by shrubs and ornamental trees, we found a long line of waiting Indians, and we lost no time in joining it. But Lazar soon expressed doubts as to the purpose of the line and wandered off to make inquiries, returning to announce triumphantly that we were in the wrong line: this one was only for Indians, the line for foreigners was around the back. And indeed, behind the building, in a little annex, we found an office with only a few European youths waiting in front of it. Lazar took my two passports, deliberating whether to present the Indians with the Israeli one or the British one, which seemed to interest him greatly, for he kept turning the pages to see how it was organized. In the end he gave it back to me, saying that we had better not present them with a passport that we would not know how to defend if it turned out to have flaws we had not noticed, and handed the three Israeli passports to the quiet, dark-skinned clerk, who refused even to look at them without the airline tickets and vaccination certificates. Lazar whipped out these documents, which he had ready, and smiled modestly. As a bureaucrat himself, he knew how much damage and delay could be caused by one recalcitrant official at a pivotal point. But the official wasn’t in the least hostile. The visas were quickly stamped, and we returned to the Roman street with eight free hours in front of us.
It was one o’clock, and Lazar’s wife, whom he called Dori, announced with a gleam in her eye that before anything else we had to find a good restaurant. But although I too was very hungry I decided that if I didn’t set limits right away, I would soon begin to find the pressure
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