Page 18 of Six Days in Bombay

Embarrassed to have spoken to her as I’d spoken earlier to the young boy scheduled for a tonsillectomy, I apologized and did a mock salute.

“No bother, Sona. I’m always delighted to see you.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “Tell me. What are you protecting your friend from?”

I looked at her. “Who? Indira?”

She nodded.

I should have known. As much as Mira liked to talk, she also listened. She heard what wasn’t said. She felt what wasn’t voiced. It’s one of the things I liked about her. “Her home life is not good,” I said before turning my attention to the bottle of shampoo and unscrewing the cap.

She raised her eyebrows. “When I first started painting thewomen in my work, I saw many with bruises of hard labor or abuse or neglect. I wanted to help, but it wasn’t my place. They didn’t want me to either. They told me they would be in more trouble at home if I interfered. I couldn’t understand it at first, but I finally realized that I could do more good by portraying their lives and their feelings on canvas—for the world to see. That was when the work took over and I ceased to exist. The paintings came alive under my brush. Sona…” She waited until I looked at her. “Let Indira live her life.”

Part of me was surprised at her prescience; she was telling me what Indira had, what my mother had. The other part of me bristled at the advice I didn’t want to hear.

Mira put her pencils and sketch pad off to one side. “I’m glad you’re here. There’s something I want to ask you.”

What privacy boundary was she going to cross now? I was both wary and curious. “Alright. But first, do you think you could manage to sit in a chair?”

She frowned, then shook her head. I helped her to sit up on the bed instead. She let out a whimper. I glanced at the sheets to see if she was still bleeding. There were a few stains the size of an anna. I would change her sheets after I’d washed her hair. I noticed on her chart that the nurse from the previous shift had given her a dose of morphine not long ago. Perhaps it would take effect soon. I removed the pillows behind her, replacing them with a stack of towels to catch the water. One towel I wrapped around her neck and shoulders.

She asked, “If you had to live your life over again, would you do anything differently?”

Once more, she was probing, disturbing my neat surface of duty and responsibility to delve into the soft, imperfect, messy layer underneath. But instead of rebuffing her attempt to engage me, I found myself admiring how she went about it. Like an arrow heading straight for its target. Not in a malicious way, but because she was genuinely interested.

I said, “Why do you ask?” as I poured warm water over her hair, taking care not to let it drip on her face.

“Because I can talk to you—and Amit—about what matters to me.”

I was glad she couldn’t see the blush on my cheeks. Why did her close friendship with Dr. Mishra bother me? It was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he and I were… Maybe I was more upset to know that she had anointed him, made him feel privileged to be in her circle, as she had me. She did have that way about her, making people feel special, loved. It was that trait that must have attracted Petra and Paolo—and any number of people she’d met—to her.

I poured some shampoo into my palm and massaged it onto her scalp and into her wavy black hair. It was oily now, but by the time we were done, it would be shiny again. The soothing fragrance of sandalwood filled the room.

“If I had it to do over again,” she continued. “I would have been kinder to Jo. Josephine. I’ve been thinking about her a lot. She didn’t deserve what I did to her.” Her head dipped slightly. “Jo was—is—an art dealer in Paris—a big name. She sold a lot of my work…” Mira paused. “It was while I was at the Académie there. Jo and her husband, Jean, sort of adopted me. They had me over for dinner, took me to the Louvre—we spent hours and hours there. I sketched while they strolled. They introduced me to the Jeu de Paume, Palais de Chaillot, l’Orangerie, the Impressionists. I fell in love with Gauguin and Cézanne. Jo and Jean were so kind. They listened to my rants about Paolo. And then I did the most horrible thing. It was inexcusable.” She paused again. “I betrayed them for no good reason, Sona. I made a play for Jean. Why I did it, I don’t know.”

Once more, she had shocked me. Had that been her intention? She confessed that she’d betrayed a good friend in the worst possible way. Was she looking for absolution? From me? Whowas I to pardon anyone? I waited for her to say more as I rinsed her hair with clean water from the other pan.

“Jean and I had an affair. When Jo found out, she was furious of course. And hurt. Eventually, Jean left her and Jo fired me. I don’t blame her, Sona. What I did was awful. She’d done nothing to deserve it—quite the opposite. She made a name for me in the art world. But after what I did, no agent wanted to touch me. I felt awful. I couldn’t paint. I had no money. Eventually, I went back home to Prague and flirted with Filip.” Guilt had crept into her telling. “My mother was livid. She thought I could do better. A prince or, at the very least, a diplomat.” Her smile was wry. “He was neither. Which is probably why I married him. And left for India.”

I gathered her hair in a towel and wrung it tightly. I don’t know where the words came from, but I knew them to be true. “You weren’t in love with Filip.”

She craned her neck round to look at me and nodded. “Everyone thought I was brave to defy my mother. Truth was, I didn’t want to go to India—where I’d never been—alone. I needed a companion. And Filip was a good companion.” She turned back to the front, took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I wreak havoc wherever I go, Sona.”

I didn’t know what to say. This was probably why we weren’t supposed to get close to the sick, as Rebecca had warned. I’d been so impressed by Mira, so taken by her worldliness, her sophistication. Now I saw a far more complicated woman, who, as loving as she was to me, had betrayed people who loved her. And she’d done it on purpose. Would she do the same to me one day? She’d known the lines she was crossing and had done it anyway. Only now did she sound remorseful. Normally, I would have tried to replace a patient’s darkness with light, left her in good humor. But with Mira I resisted. She’d drawn me in. Allowed me, encouraged me, to get close to her. Hadn’t that made me feel important? And then, she’d disappointed me. Was thatwhat my mother felt when she found out the man she adored, the one who had fostered their coupling, was a charlatan?

I gathered my supplies—damp towels, enamel pans, shampoo—and put them on the gurney. When I turned around to tell her I was coming back to change the sheets and help her settle for bed, I saw tears making their way down the sides of her nose onto her lips. Her guilt—albeit belated—thawed a little of my resistance. Wasn’t it enough that our bodies, our limbs hurt? Why did we also have to hurt in our heart, the pain tucked so deeply in the soft tissue that we couldn’t just pluck it out? I took the handkerchief out of my pocket and wiped her face. Then I turned to go.

She caught my wrist to stop me from leaving. “Thank you.”

I nodded. She was thanking me for listening to her without judging her. But in my heart, I had judged. How could I not? I understood what Mira’s friend Jo, what her friend Petra, what her lover Paolo must have felt, how Mira had used them. I’d also been on the other side of betrayal. It was ugly, a thing with claws, covered in scales.

It was my father.

***

Timothy Stoddard was helping his uncle into a wheelchair with a wicker back. The lower part of the chair could be extended ninety degrees to accommodate patients with a broken leg. Dr. Stoddard’s cast had been removed earlier that day.

“My dear! Your carriage awaits!” the good doctor said when I entered the room.

Timothy laughed. “She can’t very well sit in your lap, Uncle.”

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