7

The Cobra

“Kai! Kai!” Henry shrieked.

Kai couldn’t hear him.

Where on earth was he? Henry looked around: a few mud huts, a dog dozing in the shade, the streets shimmering. No sign of Kai. They were standing in a village in India in the middle of nowhere. This couldn’t be happening.

Two months earlier, they had packed their backpacks and taken off. A trip through Asia: leaving behind the hospital, the lab, just letting it all go for a while. The next few weeks would be devoted to family. Linoy, Kali, and Kai should explore, observe, marvel, and grow in the process; learn to accept that every culture has its own rules, its own music, its own food. The children were well-traveled enough by now to encounter Asia, the most exuberant continent.

This trip, Henry thought, would be especially important for Kai. His eyes would be sated, his mind filled with new impressions, and he could walk off his antsiness. Kai would find peace.

They started in Thailand. Koh Phangan, Koh Samui: snorkeling in the green-blue sea, eating coconut for breakfast, drinking mango lassis, eating pineapple on the beach amid the passing vendors. The word massaaaage resounded every half hour or so. Henry flagged down the men and women with the pointy hats. Everyone got a massage except Kai, who didn’t like the feeling of oily sand on his skin. At night, they explored the local market, sampling fruit they had never seen before—the spikey rambutan, the meaty durian. Back at home, they ate fish fresh off the grill, except Kai, who couldn’t stand the smell. They visited temples, wandered through the jungle. They even rode elephants. How prickly the skin felt through their pants! How they swayed as the elephants walked. The whole jungle seemed to dance.

They stayed longer in one hotel, dreaming the days away. Kai was quiet and relaxed for the first time in years. It was beyond lovely. On the day of their departure, the entire staff lined up in the lobby, and they each hugged Kai and waved goodbye. The whole family was surprised. They learned that Kai had been visiting with the employees every day, every last one of them, from reception to the kitchen, from the gardeners to the maids. He had struck up conversations and learned all their names, helping them work and telling them stories. They loved him. It was almost like back when Kai was the most popular kid in the neighborhood. Their little Kai! He waved back, beaming.

They traveled on to India, toward Dharamshala. Henry explained to the children that they would now be learning something about Buddhism and meditation. It came off more heavy-handed than he had intended. He wanted to show the children something he had learned in the lab: that everyone saw the world differently. They moved at a leisurely pace, often lingering for days in one town, taking part in local life. Henry studied Tibetan medicine. The girls took painting classes, drawing so-called thangkas on linen, meditation pictures they had seen hanging in temples. In a monastery, they all learned to meditate, sitting in the lotus pose among the monks. Kai was even calmer. He had taken a liking to it all. With big eyes and even bigger questions, he approached the foreign reality.

They hired a driver to take them to Nepal, the ceiling of the world. The way there alone took their breath away. The meandering roads! Outside the jeep, the mountains towered, and the valleys gaped. They could hardly bear to look. Suddenly, the car stopped. A landslide. “It will take days before it’s cleared up,” the driver said, eventually.

What to do? Turn around or dig in? A group of mountain farmers, who were standing around inspecting the damage, pointed them to a hostel on the other side of the river. The bridge that led over it, hanging three hundred feet above the water, reminded Henry of Indiana Jones movies. Today, twenty years later, he would never set foot on that bridge, but back then . . .

Off they went, spurred on by the belief that the risk would strengthen Kai. And he was eager. He stepped onto the bridge, carefully at first, one foot after the other, until Henry lifted him up onto his shoulders—better safe than sorry. Kai now towered above the banister rope, and Henry worried he might topple off into the abyss. He set him down again, placed Kai’s left hand on the rope, took his other hand, and they fumbled their way across, hearts in their boots. What on earth had possessed them? It took two hours to reach the other side, and in those 120 minutes Henry’s hands cramped, the sweat ran down his back, his breathing became shallow, and he was never far from losing consciousness. Kai squeaked along happily. Finally, they arrived at the hostel. They ate, slept, and lingered for a few days until the road had been cleared, and then they had to walk the whole long way back.

Next stop: Kathmandu. Kai, who seemed to cast off all fears, kept running away. Only the meat market made him shudder. It smelled so strong that they all held their breath and dashed to the other side. They emerged vegetarians; none of them could eat meat for the next two years.

The Himalayas loomed over them. They went for long hikes. On one such trail—not as dangerous as the bridge but still pretty steep—Kai took off down the slope. Henry jumped after him, a 45-degree incline, and both of them slid down hundreds of feet of gravel, through thorn bushes, finally plopping in a stream in the valley. They returned wet and scratched up, though in truth it was only Henry who was scratched. Kai, miraculously, was unscathed. He apparently thought it was funny. “What was that?” Henry snarled at him. He didn’t know this was a mere prelude.

They spent a few starry nights at the foot of Mount Everest. They experienced a thunderstorm like they’d never seen before and were so transfixed by the lightning and great balls of fire that they spent half of the drive back to Dharamshala recalling the details. They arrived tanned, singing, so accustomed to dawdling that they made a stop in a hamlet that had nothing to offer but vegetable curry. Sated and satisfied, they took a stroll through the village.

Where was Kai? Henry looked around again. He saw the same mud huts, the same dog in the shade, the same shimmering streets, and still no trace of Kai. Henry looked at Anat and shrugged.

How often had he disappeared on them already? They had lost him five times in Kathmandu alone.

The first time it happened, their hearts almost stopped. They shrieked his name, the whole family searching frantically amid the bustling crowd, only for him to suddenly reappear with that look in his eyes that made it so hard to be mad. “I was over there,” he said. “They have prickly fruit.” They scolded him. “Think of what could happen! Your sisters don’t run away like that.” Kai appeared contrite but then disappeared again soon after. They took one look at the map, and already Kai had taken off down an alleyway because he heard some music. They were chatting with a local, and already Kai was in hot pursuit of a dog or a water fountain. When he disappeared at a festival, they climbed a nearby hill in the hope of spying his T-shirt in the crowd. Suddenly, he was standing right next to them. Henry started to grasp that they were seeing things the wrong way around: Kai hadn’t lost them; they had lost Kai. In fact, Kai was the responsible party. At least, he always seemed to know where they were.

But where was he now? Perhaps over there, on the square, in the crowd? It looked like the whole village was assembled. Kai was probably waiting for them there.

From far away, they heard tooting and buzzing. A musician, maybe? Henry, Anat, and the girls approached a wall of backs. They tried to see what the crowd was looking at. Henry stood on his tiptoes, and the children bent down to see through the thicket of legs, but despite their peeking over and under, they couldn’t see anything. They pushed in farther. “There!” Kali said. She could finally see what was going on—a snake charmer had cast his spell on the crowd. The old man was sitting with his legs folded, a dirty orange turban on his head, a pungi flute at his lips, which sounded a bit like a bagpipe. A cobra danced in front of him, a real one with poisonous fangs, meandering back and forth in a threatening trance.

How this unexpected act excited them! Anat got out the video camera. The crowd was rippling to the rhythm, but then suddenly fell completely silent. A little boy had emerged from their midst and was walking toward the cobra.

“Kai!” Kali shrieked.

The snake charmer’s eyes widened, the village held its breath, the flute kept playing, the snake kept dancing, and Kai walked over to the cobra, all the way up to it. Slowly he lifted his little hand, leaned in, and started petting the snake. Tap, tap, tap. “Kai!” Kali, Henry, Linoy, and Anat shrieked. The snake charmer’s eyes were now so wide with alarm that he stopped playing. The audience stood stock-still. Kai kept petting the snake, mischievously tapping its head, staring at it with the same expectant look he had shown the Israeli psychologist. Let’s just see what happens.

“Kai, Kai, come here!” Henry shrieked. The whole crowd started calling him, summoning him back. The snake charmer, who didn’t know what to do, put the pungi back to his lips and kept playing; he was playing for Kai’s life. While the snake threatened, swinging, hissing, and Kai tried to get its attention, Henry squeezed his way through the crowd, but nobody wanted to budge—this specter was too wild to look away. Finally emerging at the other end, Henry grabbed Kai by the shoulders and pulled him away.

“Kai!” he said quietly and hugged him tight.

“I was just . . .”

Anat and Henry spent the rest of the day in shock. What if the cobra had bitten him? A young child poisoned in the hinterlands, hours from the nearest hospital. They had been so lucky.

Their driver later explained to them that the snake must have just woken up from a long nap; it must have been terribly confused by all the light and movement. Cobras are deaf, so it couldn’t even hear the flute. Petting it would have been just one among many distractions, less threatening than the general glare and hovering instrument.

Henry and Anat lay awake that night. Things couldn’t go on this way.