Page 13 of Six Days in Bombay

The painter put her hand on his arm, smiling up at him. “Exactly.”

Dr. Mishra stood straighter. “I don’t often get to talk paintings, but I do need to talk medicine now and again.” He said to Mira, serious now, “Let Nurse Falstaff know how you’re feeling. I’ve increased your dosage, which should help. I am a little concerned about the lingering pain. Has Dr. Holbrook been to see you?”

Mira shook her head and reached out a hand for him to clasp. “You will come see me before you leave tonight?”

He didn’t take her hand but patted her forearm. “I make no promises.” He smiled first at her, then at me. He tipped his head slightly, his gray eyes lingering on mine a moment, sending a jolt through me. My legs felt unsteady. My breath sped up. When he’d left the room, I shook my head to cast off the strange feeling.

Mira was looking at me with a crafty smile. “Quite the catch, isn’t he?”

“Is he?” I didn’t want to pursue this line of conversation. After the proposal from Mohan’s father, I was wary of entertaining any entanglements. I took the thermometer from my nurse’s apron and unscrewed the cap. She held her mouth open long enough for me to insert it under her tongue. I could feel her watching me as I went about the room, cracking open the window to let out the stale air.

Behind me, Mira said, “100.5. A little high.”

I turned and took the thermometer from her. “How is the pain?” I shook the thermometer to clear the reading and noted the temperature on her chart.

“Tolerable as long as I keep my mind off it.” She shifted her body, clearly uncomfortable in the bed. I had a feeling she was downplaying her suffering in the doctor’s presence.

“Stay please.” She kept her voice light, but I heard the plea.

I hesitated. Would Matron be watching my every move now? Would she send Rebecca to spy on me to see if I was fraternizing too much with Mira? I looked at the wall clock and calculated how many patients I needed to check up on in the next hour. I could spend perhaps ten more minutes with Mira.

I pointed to the fourth canvas. “He’s different from the rest.”

She laughed. It was a husky sound, as if she’d been a smoker all her life. “That is Paolo. He took me to see Giotto’s work in Florence—those large murals packed with people in voluminous robes. I loved it. And tried to imitate it.” She held an index finger in the air as if she were making a point. “Paolo always said if you could imitate the greats, you could become a great painter. I imitated Giotto’s style but instead of religious figures, I painted people on the streets of Florence, lining up to see the inside of the Duomo. Or buying apples at the San Lorenzo Market. Those were some of Jo’s—Josephine’s—favorites. She sold so many of them. She wanted me to do more like them but set them at the flower market or the Gare de Lyon in Paris.” She stopped, as if picturing the paintings. “I was only eighteen you know when I got to Paris. I wanted to stay with Paolo in Florence, but he said I would be throwing a wonderful opportunity away if I didn’t go.” She sighed. Perhaps she was picturing him. If he looked anything like the painting, I could see why.

“Did you like Paris?” I would have loved to go, but it was an impossible dream.

She spread her arms wide. “Oh, Sona! It was most incredible.That’s where I first saw the Impressionists. I tried my hand at Gauguin’s style. I fell in love with Cézanne’s apples. And Degas’s ballet dancers. It was fabulous when Petra joined me in Paris. She would sit for me. For hours. She was a great model. She’s the one with the long hair inTwo Women. The painting that got me into the Salon.” She paused. “She wanted to be a painter too. Maybe because I was one. She wanted to do everything I did. Petra’s technique was good, but her work lacked…a focus, a central idea.” Mira flushed, looking embarrassed. “I’m afraid I was too harsh with her. Critical. Impatient. In those days, I could be heartless. I told her she should give up painting. That she’d never be any good.” She released a wistful sigh. “I can still see her face, the way her eyelids drooped and her mouth went slack. She thought I walked above the clouds, and there I was, squashing her like a flea.” She looked down at her hands, playing with the sheet. “I don’t know why I did that. And I wished to God I hadn’t.”

She hadn’t been this miserable asking about her baby that first day. In fact, she hadn’t mentioned the baby since. I’d never nursed a mother who seemed so indifferent to birth and death. Mira was far more passionate about painting than the child she’d been carrying.

Mira shook her head, as if shaking off her melancholy and plastered a smile on her face. “You liked that one of Po but you didn’t say so when Dr. Mishra was here.”

My cheeks were on fire. I didn’t realize she’d noticed. I said, “Dr. Mishra might think me…”

Mira laughed. “Wanton? Longing for a man? Sona, don’t you know it’s alright to be all those things and still be who you are? Look at me. I’m all those things—wanton, outspoken, depraved, craving everything and wanting more. I couldn’t be an artist if I couldn’t show those feelings on canvas. Or in person!”

I found myself wondering what would happen if I told people what I thought?Mrs. Mehta, tell your father-in-law to stop beingsuch a tosser!The very idea! But it emboldened me to ask Mira, “Why do you choose to paint such somber women? As if they take no pleasure in their lives. Don’t village women experience joy as well?”

Her eyes were dancing when she said, “I would put it to you, dear Sona, that there is joy in the stillness of my paintings. The serenity of the Indian people—so unlike Europeans who seem obsessed with what the future holds—soothes me. Even as the women roll chapattis. Even as thedhobisslap wet cloth against the rocks. Even as the henna artist draws on the hands of a betrothed, there is joy. And warmth. And tranquility. Of the likes I haven’t found in Europe. I needed to come to India to find it.”

She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “You’re half Indian like me, aren’t you?” It was part answer, part question.

Ah, there it was. The thing that separated me from those who had a right to belong in this country. If they didn’t say it to my face, they said it behind my back. They were either curious or disdainful. I let go of her hand and began straightening the sheet on my side of her bed. “My mother is Indian.” I didn’t tell her I hated my last name. I didn’t tell her I hadn’t seen my father since the age of three. I didn’t tell her I wished him dead. I didn’t tell her that if it weren’t for him, my mother’s life would have been so much better.

She watched me as I tucked the sheet, a little too forcefully, around the bottom corners of the bed. “My mother is from Lucknow. My father is Czech. I’ve been both Indian and European for so long that I’m not sure which side is more me.”

There was a major difference between us, even in ourhalf-halfheritage, however. She considered her otherness a source of pride. She flaunted it, like a peacock’s train. It made her special. It made her an artist. A painter. I, on the other hand, wore my otherness like a scratchy blouse that I couldn’t wait to take off at the end of the day.

I looked at my watch, realizing I was late attending to thepregnant patient who had taken Mrs. Mehta’s place now that Mr. Mehta had taken his wife home.

I excused myself, thanking Mira for sharing her work with me. When I’d first met her, I’d thought Mira’s ways were too big for the world I inhabited. But like breath, my life seemed to expand whenever I was around her.

***

I went to the stockroom to drop off the soiled sheets from Mira’s bed and get fresh ones for the very pregnant Mrs. Roy. Indira was sitting on the bench in the middle of the room, crying. When she saw me, she turned away. I dumped the sheets in the rolling canvas hamper and went to her. Her hands were cold and her teeth were chattering.

“Balbir said you’d stopped by,” she said. “He thought I’d asked you to come. You can’t come to the house again, Sona. Ever.” Her tears were wetting her uniform. “My girls, they saw everything. They saw their father beat their mother. He told them it was because I was bad. I had done something wrong. I saw the look on their faces. They didn’t want to believe him, but with no one to speak up for me, they are bound to. If everyone around you is telling you the sky is red, you’re going to start believing it.”

---